Your Adventure Begins at Midday
by signalsandsoundwaves
Summary: A novelization of the games if Sora was a girl, Kairi got some actual character development and backstory, and Riku's initial fall to the Darkness was for (hopefully) better reasons than what they gave us. Now with illustrations if you go look for this fic on Ao3! Soriku, RikuxSora, rule 63!Sora, Fem!Sora, Girl!Sora, Slow burn (the slowest burn you will ever see).
1. Prologue: The New Girl

**There are illustrations with this story, but I can only post them on Ao3 with the formatting capabilities, so head on over there if you would like to see them! (this fic is under the exact same title and I have the same username there, I added a note in my profile too)**

I would like to preface this work by saying a few quick facts about it:

1\. I will uphold canon as best I can, and the times it doesn't look like I'm upholding canon, that's because canon doesn't acknowledge it or fill in the blanks. (And KH canon doesn't fill in _a looot_ of blanks) The most I'll do is swap around some _very_ minor events for the purposes of storytelling, major things get left untouched.

2\. However, I will introduce a few b-plots through all of the games' novelizations, either for shipping purposes or for character development purposes. I will base these foremost off of what small suggestions of them we get in canon, but a couple of them don't really go off of canon suggestions, and that's because, again, KH canon still has a lot of holes in it. Perhaps KH3 will fill them in, in which case I will go back and edit things as needed.

3\. This is a Fix-It novelization fic, which primarily means that I'm going to clean up a lot of the robotic dialogue and help make canon make more sense. This will be much more apparent in the case of DDD which, while it had gobs of Soriku material, also threw a giant wrench into everything we thought we knew of the series until that point, and still throws a wrench in things in regards to what we know of KH3. I'm going to try and set that up properly throughout the games so it makes sense.

So the TL;DR is, the destination will be exactly the same, just some minor character development and filling in of never-discussed details on my part going off of canon's implications. Thank you!

* * *

 _When does a story begin?_

 _It seems for this question, everyone has their own answers to it. Perhaps a story starts with its characters, still stuck within their creators' minds long before said creators leave any physical evidence of the existence of their ideas. Perhaps the story is made when its conflict is thought of, before any actors are put on the stage. Or maybe, it begins long before either characters or conflict are made, and the story begins with the beginning of the creator themselves._

 _Or it could be that I am just saying pretty things, and stories are as stories do, and they begin when they are put to paper and nothing more._

 _But if you were to ask when this story should begin, I don't know what the answer would be. It could start a hundred years before everything, with a war between pupils that was sparked by their unscrupulous teacher, that remade the worlds as we know them now. Or maybe this story begins with a broken boy, a misguided master, and a feckless youth that trusted too much and was punished for it._

 _But for the sake of simplicity, I'll just say that this story begins with a girl, a boy, and a princess, who find themselves on a tiny cluster of islands that they call home._

* * *

 **SORA + RIKU**

 _Unknown number of years before the fall of Destiny Islands_

 _Unknown number of years before the fall of Radiant Garden_

Later on, if you asked either of them about it, neither of the children would be able to tell you how they met.

Perhaps that is inaccurate. The answer of _how_ is easy: Both of them met in a daycare run by Sora's mother. What they did to meet is easy to guess—They could have been playing and decided to play together, and the rest is history. Or they could have met solely through physical proximity and the guileless social ease of children.

The answer of _when_ , though, is a little harder. To Sora, and Riku, the other was sort of always there. And that was how they liked it.

Where one went, the other followed, and vice versa. Birthdays. Holidays. Sunrises and sunsets. Summer afternoons and autumn evenings, and every hour of the day in between.

And one meandering day, filled with sandcastles and fanciful notions of knighthood, Sora's dad gave the children presents: A wooden sword for each of them. The swords were clumsily fashioned, made with more love than skill, and almost too large for Sora and Riku to wield properly yet, but they loved them and that was all that mattered. And so, sparring was added to their repertoire, overtaking even the sandcastles and games of pretend, and somewhere along the way other kids joined in too.

(Sora's dad, Touma, claimed to have taken on the task as a first woodworking project, but interestingly dropped the hobby shortly after completion of the swords. He claimed there were too many splinters, that he already dealt with thorns at work. But Mina, Sora's mom, noticed the way his eyes danced whenever their daughter came in with a grin wider than her small face and fresh calluses and scrapes up and down her short little legs. And she certainly noticed the schematics for a pair of small shields to match.)

A time would come when destiny came for the children, but not for a long while yet. For now their days would be simple and sweet, subject to their own whims rather than those of greater forces, and the kids would be kids and nothing less.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _12 Years until the fall of Destiny Islands_

 _2 Years until the fall of Radiant Garden_

Kairi's earliest memory was of working in the garden with her grandmother.

She wasn't so good at spelling all of the flowers' names yet, but she knew their colors and what they smelled like. The red roses had such a sweeter, deeper scent compared to the pink ones, which smelled lighter, more delicate. The white roses were different, with some types of white roses scented just like the pink ones, but other white roses didn't have any smell at all. And then there were the violets, which were such a pretty purple color and had such a nice fragrance, but only for a moment.

Kairi's favorites were the lilacs. They only bloomed for a short while, at the beginning of spring for just a couple of weeks, but those couple of weeks were punctuated with the fresh perfume of the blossoms and the knowledge that Kairi could commence work in the garden with her grandmother.

She didn't remember much in the memory, but she could remember the feel of the rich dark dirt crumbling in her tiny hands, and the squirming sensation of the occasional worm that might be in the clod. There was the sighing applause of leaves moving in the wind, the choir of birdsong and windchimes, and through it all her grandmother talking about all sorts of things, and Kairi wasn't so good at talking yet, but she was happy to simply listen to her all the same.

And one day, she told Kairi a story. Of Light, and the jealousy it had tempted. And the Darkness that followed it, and swallowed it, and tore everything asunder. And finally, of a _new_ Light, forged from countless Hearts by children like her, that fixed everything until one day the old Light could be found.

With that tale was a resolution: That Kairi could never be lost, so long as she followed Light's way. And she could never be defeated, so long as she had trust in that Light, and with it she could help save everything just like the kids in the story did.

Kairi loved that story. So much so, that the instant she learned words like 'please', 'tell it again', and 'one more story', she would ask for it and ask for it and ask for it. If her grandmother was weary of telling it so many times, she rarely showed it, but always indulged her. And beyond the feeling of dirt in her hands, or the wriggling of worms, or the soft velvet of flower petals, that feeling of hope was what she remembered most. Hope that maybe one day she could be a hero too.

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _10 Years until the fall of Destiny Islands_

 _6 Months before the fall of Radiant Garden_

After he met that man on the play island, Riku started to have dreams where he was fighting.

He was never alone in the dreams. There were others with him, people whose faces and forms he couldn't see, but he knew they were always there, whether by the light of their magic or by the strength of their shields.

In the first few dreams Riku wielded one of the familiar wooden swords he and Sora played with in their duels, but the shape of it began to change. It became longer, stouter, the end of it capped by a rectangular knob that he used as a bludgeon at times, the design completed with four teeth. The hilt grew rectangular until it formed a guard around the handle, and at the base of the sword sprouted a small chain with a charm at the end that bumped against his arm when he swung the sword. And slowly, Riku realized the wooden toy sword he'd spar with during the day turned into a giant key, exactly like the one the man had him hold when Riku took the oath.

But while its shape never changed, for it was always a keyblade, the form of it evolved. It flashed in between designs, and sometimes it was the large, almost unwieldy bronze and blue key with four teeth at the end of its blade, while other times it took on countless other appearances. And all along, he and his friends were fighting.

And one day, when Riku woke up after a particularly vivid dream, the weight of that key-shaped sword still in his mind, he saw a charm in his outstretched hand.

A crown. Three-pointed and almost geometric in its structure. And at the end of it was a clasp, ready to be placed on anything.

He was not sure where it came from, whether it just appeared there or if perhaps one of his parents carefully placed it in his hand as he slept. The gesture seemed out of character for both of them, neither his mother or the father to be the type to give spontaneous presents outside of the designated holidays, and he was too afraid to ask. So Riku kept it close, secret from everyone except Sora, whom he showed it to the same day he got it. They both marveled over the charm, both at the looks of it and at the idea of it just magically appearing in his hand. The concept of magic— _real_ magic— having made the charm appear was a wonder to the children, a reprieve from the relative tedium of life on Destiny Islands. And when he found a chain that worked well with the charm, a forgotten past Christmas present he'd found in his bedside drawer, he wore it under his shirt, instinctively knowing he should keep the necklace secret from everyone except for Sora.

It became one of his most cherished possessions.

Once he wore the charm, the dreams suddenly felt so much more real. He could feel how the sword cut through the monsters, the resistance of their hides and the give when he cut through into air. Riku was everywhere in the dreams, never staying in one place for very long; First he was wandering with his friends through a jungle, a cavern, and then along the rooftops of a town somewhere. At one point he was walking on the walls and the ceiling in a house that looked like something out of a cartoon.

Another thing that changed with the appearance of the charm—now necklace—was his sword in his dreams. The unwieldy rectangular bronze and blue sword shifted slowly over the days into a much simpler design. First, he blinked, and then the blade and the hilt switched colors, the hilt now a gleaming gold. And then the blade's blue color lightened until it was silver. And then the four teeth at the end of the blade shifted, warped, until it was one rectangular tooth with the shape of a crown in the negative space. And finally a simple shape of three connected circles, two smaller circles atop a third larger one, made up its new charm at the end of the chain on the hilt. The sword was much less unwieldy, then, no longer awkwardly heavy in Riku's grip. In comparison, it felt as light as air.

He didn't forget most of the dreams, anymore, when he wore the necklace. Riku could remember everything. He used those memories to renew his fervor in his and Sora's spars and he won even more often than he did before, to the girl's surprise. In a way, the dreams worked as practice, too.

But it was strange. Because before Riku had the charm, he had the dreams most every night, though they were less vivid. And now, with the charm, Riku didn't always have the dreams even though they were more lucid. They came and went in waves, especially if he was having a good day. Riku noticed that when he was happy, his thoughts not straying to his home life or his parents, it was as if the dreams never left, and Riku was wandering around all sorts of places fighting strange creatures.

But when Riku was having a bad day, the dreams dried up. Disappeared. Crumbled into dust. He tried not to have any bad days, but it was hard, because that wasn't often in his control. He dreamed of nothing and yearned for his friends, his sword, the glory.

And then, on the bad days, Riku started to dream of the door on the play island instead.

It started out harmless enough. He would be walking alone on a shore, and sometimes it was in the middle of the night, and other times it was in the middle of the day. It wasn't the play island as he remembered it looking, small details here and there shifting and morphing as he looked at them, but it never seemed important to Riku in the dream. He'd call for his friends from the good dreams, but they never responded, and he never found them.

Instead it was the door that called back to him, across the dream island. There was no voice or any particular sensation other than a pulling feeling, like an invisible tether connected him to it. And with nothing else to do, Riku followed. The first few dreams, he simply stood in front of the door, his hand hovering towards it cautiously, and then drawing away. But one day he swallowed back his fear enough to open it.

Sometimes, he opened the door and that was how the dream ended, with Riku waking up and the necklace feeling unusually heavy on his neck. But sometimes, he opened the door and the dream kept going.

The door never opened to the same place twice. One night, he would be walking along the shore and it was noon, the crash of the waves ringing in his ears. He would open the door and step out into the bottom of the ocean somewhere. Another night, it would be morning on the shore, and Riku would see a large, sweeping ballroom when he opened the door, with strange beings that looked like furniture puttering about that never seemed to notice him staring at them.

In the dream one particularly bad day after a fight with his parents, it was late into the night, the imaginary moon high up in the sky. And when he opened the door this time, it swung out onto a rocky field that was devoid of any plants or animals, save for blackened, twisted trees in the distance. There were glowing cracks in the earth below a dark, purpling sky. Mist gathered all around.

Another bad night, and it would be sunset in the dream, and the door would open onto a strange shore where the moon was already risen and jagged rocks twisted in the air above.

He told Sora about the dreams of the door sometimes, keeping his dreams of the keyblade a secret as part of his promise to the man from months before. Mostly he told her about the good ones, where he would wander around forests with talking flowers and towns that celebrated Halloween every day, with her amazed at every detail. He felt good at that. He'd always liked having her attention on him.

As he'd grow older the cynic in Riku would want to dismiss the door on the play island as just a prank, or someone's past art project, or _something_ , any normal rationalization for that which would come to invade his thoughts on more than one occasion.

But the dreamer side of him would keep thinking about it, and would keep thinking about the door opening to somewhere off the islands that have begun to feel claustrophobic to the boy.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _10 Years until the fall of Destiny Islands_

 _6 months until the fall of Radiant Garden_

Her second memory started much fuzzier, but she remembered what happened next. The clearest part of it were these strange black things, that walked like people, but didn't look like them at all. Whatever they were, they were bowed, mean, and moved with a purpose. And they were moving towards her.

Once they caught sight of her with those glowering red eyes, she ran, but they were faster. They leapt, and slid through the air like oil, with their hands sharpened into a single point that didn't bode well for her.

And Kairi remembered feeling so _stupid_. This was what she got for being careless. Her grandmother told her again and again that day to not wander off, and Kairi had gotten distracted looking around at the blooms in the castle's flowerbeds and ended up separated and now she had no idea where she was.

She heard a voice from behind her telling her to run, but run where? All around her were indistinguishable stone walls and the sky, there was nowhere Kairi could escape to. She was terrified that those things were gaining up on her. That they were going to cut into her with those pointed claws or with those strange curved antlers that looked nothing like the antlers she would see on wildlife in the fields.

Kairi wasn't looking where she was going, she could only run. She was breathless from running, could feel the stitch in her side screaming and burning, but there was no stopping. Whatever they were, they were coming for her, and she couldn't stop if she wanted to live.

She ran, and ran, and ran, hearing her footsteps grow sloppy from exhaustion, the soles of her shoes smacking the ground, and every part of her felt like it was burning. Her throat was like sandpaper, the breaths coming out in a rasp, and she screamed in the hopes that someone would hear that could help her get away. And all the while, those creatures, those not-quite-people that moved so strangely, got closer.

And then there was a wall. Kairi nearly smacked into it until she finally looked up and saw it was uncomfortably close, and she realized she was trapped. If she felt tired before, she was exhausted now that she stopped, the stitch that was still searing into her was matched by another on the opposite side, and her windpipe had gone from feeling like sandpaper to the desert, dry and hot and burning all the way to her lungs, and the lactic acid that had built up in her legs began to catch up. She knew she wouldn't be able to run again.

The things knew they had her cornered. This time they seemed to approach slower, almost teasingly, in the way that made her think that they didn't just want to destroy her, they wanted to make her terrified before they did it. Kairi balled her fists before raising them over her head automatically, a gesture that she knew wouldn't do much to shield her from their claws, the forgotten flowers in her hand bending at the stems.

And finally, Kairi caught a glimpse of blue out of the corner of her eye and turned her head. And that's when she saw her.

Kairi always had a talent for being able to sense who she could and couldn't trust. It was hard to put into words, but some people just… _felt_ nicer, more genuine, but it wasn't the kind of feeling that you could do with your hands. The people she could trust the best felt as warm and endless as a summer day, Light shining from them in place of a sun.

And the people she couldn't trust? Well, she hadn't encountered many of them around the castle, but there were some amongst the people who felt clouded, dimmer, their Light dogged by a Darkness that hadn't taken root but managed to leave a seed. She had learned to keep those people at arm's length but stay sympathetic. Perhaps their troubled nature hadn't come from a fault in their character but a fault in their circumstance.

The blue out of the corner of her eye turned out to be a woman, tall and bright, so bright, the Light within her so much stronger and surer than anyone Kairi had ever met. And on instinct, she ran to her, hiding behind her and clutching to the strange sword the woman held aloft.

Kairi didn't know it at the time, but it was the moment she grasped that sword that she completed an eternal ritual, one of inheritance and a vow to defend. The ceremony of heroes.

The creatures turned towards the woman and Kairi, and more joined them. Slithering above in that strange angular dance, they seemed to be sizing the two up. She shuddered at the way their red eyes glowed with a calculating look, and they seemed to be communicating with one another mutely, making a silent plan. And finally, one was daring enough to lunge.

But before they could reach the two, someone (something?) else swept in front of them with a shout and destroyed the thing with a swipe of their sword, the blade in the same strange type of shape as the one Kairi was gripping in the woman's hand.

It was a…mouse? He, Kairi assumed it was a he, didn't look much like any mouse she'd ever seen. Two round ears and a flickering tail were where the similarities with a mouse ended. He was short, as short as Kairi, and wore black clothes with zippers and straps all over them. A cartoonish face was held in a scowl reserved for those creatures, who by now had seen what the mouse had done to one of their own and held back, watching the three. The creatures inspected the strange sword in the mouse's hand from a distance.

"Hurry!" The mouse called back to them, "You gotta get that girl to somewhere safe,"

"Who are you? Why do you have a keyblade?" The woman questioned, and Kairi looked up to see her puzzled expression.

"I'll tell you later. Right now, we gotta stop these things!"

The woman shifted her stance in acquiescence. And with one hand she picked Kairi up and slung her under her arm like she weighed nothing, the young girl letting out a sound of surprise at it. The flowers still in Kairi's grip, she looked back past the woman's arm to watch the mouse anxiously. He was calm in the way that told Kairi he had experience with whatever those things were that had begun to encircle him. She hoped they couldn't hurt him.

The woman ran down the steps and a little into the courtyard down below. Upon reaching a grassy area, she put the girl down hurriedly, and crouched down to eye level for a moment.

"Stay here, okay? Shout if you're in trouble." She said, and Kairi nodded. At this, the woman ran back towards where the mouse had begun fighting those creatures, and she moved so fast it was almost as if she flew.

Kairi angled her head to try and watch. Those things were terrifying, and side by side the mouse and the strange woman's combined Lights were so dazzling that Kairi was worried for them, as she didn't want to see them extinguished. But more than worried, she was curious. She wanted to know what those 'keyblades' could do.

And it turned out they could do a _lot_.

The mouse used his more as a classical weapon, spinning and darting forward in a variety of forms, the keyblade piercing the monsters, who dissolved into clouds of smoke under the force. Those claws, the threatening antlers and the red-eyed gazes that seemed too intelligent for such an animal form, poof. Gone. As if that keyblade were just a hot knife slicing through butter.

And the woman, she was _electric_. Her Light had wreathed her with fire, with frost, with thunder. Magic poured from her keyblade between strikes, and she moved around the creatures like an acrobat. They could hardly touch her. And glowing with light, real light that was forged of magic and Heart, she crossed the entire span of the balcony in a split second, the move capped off with a sharp thrust into the body of another monster. And then she raised her weapon to the sky, and with a flash of light and a shout Kairi couldn't hear the words to, the magic danced over the woman's skin with a tinkling chime, and whatever small wounds she had accumulated sewn themselves shut until it was as if they had never happened. Kairi felt her eyes grow impossibly wide at that.

Over the course of the fight, more of those creatures gathered, seemingly lured by some invisible connection. There were more of those creatures that had chased Kairi, but there were more still whose forms were stranger, some looking more like architecture than animal that bounced from foot to foot and had three leaf-like yellow things sprouting out of their heads, which were featureless silver spheres. And there were some amongst the crowd that fought from above, in the shape of condors, or vultures. But instead of any birds she had ever seen, the only similarities were these creatures having two wings, their gunmetal grey skin devoid of feathers.

And every one of them was destroyed. The woman did a strange move where light began to form at the tip of her keyblade again and she held it high, sliding around the balcony on one foot in a pirouette, the light descending from the weapon in streamers that sucked in the creatures and beat them around to the sound of bells.

"Let's team up!" The mouse cried, and Kairi watched her give a nod before running over to match his stance. And they rose into the air, their keyblades pointed out, surrounded with light once more that poured from them to the creatures that had amassed. The things had begun to poof out of existence one by one, the noises of their annihilation drowned out by the sound of chimes, and still the magic poured forth, surrounding the two fighters with stars, and swirls aglow.

And only when the last creature died, one of those strange birds who dispersed into smoke with a weary 'puff!', did the woman and the mouse start to relax. And Kairi nervously approached the stairs to come closer to them.

It was partially out of a sense of safety, as Kairi hadn't seen anything manage to destroy those things until she saw what they could do with those keyblades, but it was mostly out of awe. The blue-haired woman, whoever she was, was _amazing_ , and what Kairi would remember most from this day was how badly she yearned to be just like her.

She glanced over and watched Kairi shyly climb up the stairs and gave the young girl a smile. The woman approached her with a hand outstretched, and Kairi took it, using it as a brace as she stepped onto the dais.

"Are you okay?" She asked her, and Kairi nodded. The woman gave her a quick once-over, checking for injuries, and then gave her hand a quick squeeze. "I'll help you find your parents in a moment, I just need to talk to him first, does that sound alright?" and at Kairi's assent, the woman kneeled so that she was eye-level with the mouse.

Now that Kairi could relax for a moment and examine the mouse a little more thoroughly, his appearance didn't seem quite so strange. He was odd, sure, as much as seeing a mouse that could walk and talk could be odd. But she looked beyond that to focus on what she could sense of his Heart: Whereas the woman's Light was more like the unshakable yellow splendor of the sun at high noon, the mouse's reminded Kairi more of clear morning light, when all the brightness poured in through the windows with that bluish tone. There was some Darkness, just as there was in everybody, but it was like the occasional cloud on a sunny day that you knew wasn't going to bring rain.

"Thank you. My name is Master Aqua," The woman introduced herself to the mouse, "I train under Master Eraqus."

"And I'm Mickey! I used to be Yen Sid's apprentice, I came back to him for some more training." He responded, gesticulating animatedly with his gloved hands.

Kairi tried the names out in her head. Aqua, Mickey. _What odd names they have_ , she thought to herself, it was as if they were from another world. At least the mouse certainly had to be from elsewhere. Kairi looked up when she heard them talking about her.

"I sense a clear Light within this girl," Aqua asked him, "Do you think that could be why they targeted her?"

"Yep, I think ya might be absolutely right. She must be someone extraordinary, I can't see any Darkness in her at all!"

Kairi felt her eyes widen at that. Extraordinary? Her? _But I'm just a kid,_ she thought.

Unless… maybe she was like one of the kids from the story. Who could help save everything by rekindling the Light of worlds with her own. The idea made her excited. But who were these two, she wondered, with such strange appearances that could fight with keyblades and magic? How could they sense the contents of Hearts like she could?

"You're right," Aqua spoke, "I'm worried the Unversed may come after her again because of it,"

Mickey opened his mouth to respond but was interrupted by a sparkling gleam coming from the pocket of his jacket. He reached in to reveal a star-shaped crystal in his hand that was beginning to crackle with light just like fireworks, and Mickey hurriedly moved away from the two.

"Not again!" The mouse fretted, and he looked back and forth towards them, the light crackling much more severely now and beginning to wrap him with a glow, "Sorry, this, ah, it happens a lot. But I'll be okay!" And as the stone rocketed towards the sky, Mickey still clinging to it, he shouted to them, "Let's team up again sometime!"

And with that, the mouse and the stone vanished into a speck of light that careened across the atmosphere and out of sight. Aqua chuckled.

"Probably needed extra training to control that star shard," She mused, more to herself, and then looked over at Kairi. "Before we go to find your parents, I wanted to ask you about that Light—"

"Kairi!"

The girl looked over to see her grandmother climb the stairs and walk towards them, her steps measured with age.

Aqua glanced over for a moment and seemed to think to herself for a moment. "Kairi," She said concernedly, though Kairi couldn't imagine why she'd be worried, "Just a minute?"

She lowered her hand to the pendant Kairi wore and gave it a gentle tap, a small gleam of magic rippling from the touch.

"There we go. I just cast a spell on you," She said, and Kairi looked at her with wonder, "One day when you're in trouble, the Light within you will lead you to the Light of another. Someone to keep you safe."

"Thank you!" Kairi exclaimed and had to tamper down her excitement before she got too hyper, and then she remembered the bouquet still in her hand and extended it towards the woman, "These are for you. Thank you for saving me, and for the spell," She added, and the woman gave her a gentle smile.

"That's so sweet of you," Aqua said fondly, and held the flowers in one hand and ruffled Kairi's hair with the other, "Thank you. And stay close to your grandmother from now on, okay?"

"I will!" Kairi promised before running back to her grandmother, who had reached them by then. She took her hand and bid Aqua farewell, and they left.

They had been walking for a few moments when Kairi became lost in thought. Those monsters, and the Light that both Aqua and Mickey discussed. A Light, she wondered. Her? She was someone extraordinary?

And Aqua had said those things—she had called them Unversed—they'd come after her again. Kairi clutched the pendant in her hand. But next time, she'd have a spell to keep them from getting her. A spell, magic, on _her!_ She couldn't be afraid knowing that. Kairi couldn't quell the grin on her face.

"Hey, Grandma?"

She looked over, "Hmm? What is it?"

"Could you tell me that story again?"

"Again, dear?" She chuckled.

" _Please?_ "

Her grandmother sighed, though not unkindly. "Very well, then" She complied, and Kairi squeezed her hand in gratitude. They continued to walk down the steps, through the courtyard, framed by the light of the setting sun. And her grandmother began the familiar tale:

"Long ago, people had lived in peace, bathed in the warmth of Light…"

* * *

 **SORA**

 _10 Years until the fall of Destiny Islands_

 _6 Months until the fall of Radiant Garden_

The day had been long, replete with the commotion of duels waged with wooden swords and the shouts of children racing their peers, and now the night was quiet. All of the others had gone home by now—Tidus being the first to go, followed shortly thereafter by Wakka, and eventually even Selphie left for home with a pout and escorted by her exasperated mother, who had already called for her twice by then. Only Sora and Riku were left, laying in the sand and watching the stars.

When the day began to descend into dusk, Sora had off and on felt something pulling at the edge of her consciousness. _(A phantom pain, fear, tempered with resolve.)_ And when she had dueled Riku earlier she kept seeing flashes of another fight overlaid in her vision over her own match _(a wooden sword turned into a giant key and Riku shifted into a dark figure that looked identical to her but not her, a wraith made of smoke and steel and the Dark that remains when the Light burns out)_ , and it had distracted her to the point where Riku had held off for a moment and just surveyed her cautiously before asking her if she was okay.

She was okay…or wasn't she? Sora glanced towards the ocean for a moment _(Gold sunlight splintered into red and green and blue and a whole rainbow made of shattered glass that glimmered amid the vacuum)_ and whatever it was seemed to dull. Another moment, and everything was fine. Whatever it was seemed to subside, so she shook it off and decided to keep going.

Several hours later nothing else like that had happened, and she and Riku reclined on the shore listening to the waves. There were strange twinges in her heart here and there, like when something bad happened and she wanted to cry, but no bad things had happened that day, so Sora merely chalked it up to being tired.

Eventually, Riku was the first to sit up, saying, "Hey. I'm gonna head back."

And then Sora sat up as well, briskly. "Yeah, me too."

They both began to plod towards the small fenced entrance that marked the private bay they were at, yawning and shaking the sand out of their shoes. Riku was tiredly looking towards the exit, lost in his own thoughts, when he heard her sniff.

Sora was crying. Her eyes were shiny from tears and her nose had the barest tinge of red at the tip, and he stopped.

"Sora, what's wrong?"

"Huh?" She glanced back at him and stopped walking. She hadn't realized her vision was beginning to blur and her eyes felt hot.

"You're…" He trailed off as he pointed to her eyes, and she could feel a tear begin to fall. Her brows raised in surprise as she carefully pressed a hand to her face and could feel dampness. Somewhere in her chest, her heart gave a pang.

"That's weird." She remarked, after pulling her hand away and seeing a teardrop balanced on her fingertip. "It's like something's squeezing me inside,"

She thought back to the scenes she saw earlier, and the strange heartache. Riku pondered for a moment.

"Somebody up there might be sad," He said. Sora scrunched up her eyes in confusion.

"Up where?"

The boy turned his face towards the stars.

"They say every world is connected by one great big sky. So maybe there's somebody up there in all those worlds who's really hurting, and they're waiting for you to help them."

Sora looked up. It was hard to think that every star, every light was a _world_ , with people and places and all sorts of things. It was so easy to forget when all you saw was light.

She wondered who it could be that was in trouble. Were they a little girl on an island somewhere like her? Or maybe it was some kid in a jungle or a city, or maybe they weren't even on a world at all. She frowned.

"Is there something I can do?"

Riku hummed at that and crossed his arms contemplatively. Finally, he suggested, "Maybe they just need you to open your heart and listen?"

Her forehead creased at that, and she reflexively shifted from foot to foot. Just listening? It sounded a little dubious; Listening by itself didn't sound like much of a solution to anything and it wasn't as if they were right there and able to talk to her. But she didn't have any better ideas.

"I dunno, Riku, you say some weird stuff sometimes," She teased, "But I'll try it!"

She altered her stance to something a little more attentive, with her hands instinctively closed loosely into fists. Sora lifted her face back up to the sky and tried to tune the sounds of the ocean out in search of a voice she could listen to. Finally, she closed her eyes and breathed in, out, feeling her pulse start to relax into a more uniform pattern.

She saw nothing at first and then the room appeared. There was a boy, a teen perhaps, though to her teens and adults looked alike since she was so young. He was wearing peculiar clothes with a metal armor thing attached to his shoulder, and he was seated on a throne. The boy was asleep.

The room was shaped like a circle and matched the throne, starkly white and so bright it almost hurt to see. The shadows were so faint they looked lilac. And all along the wall, a symbol kept repeating that matched the badge on the boy's chest, that looked like a geometric heart with a four-pointed star overlaid on the bottom. From the bottommost point of the symbols on the wall images of chains flashed, stretching through the floor, where the gleaming of the chains seemed to originate from that pale throne.

Sora couldn't help glancing around for a moment, fascinated by the unfamiliar architecture and the seemingly magical light that lit up the chains. Until her gaze fell back onto the boy and she remembered her task.

"Hey," She tried, "Can you hear me?"

Once she spoke, the room faded. Sora blinked, expecting to find herself back on the beach with Riku, but she was now in another new place. This time, the boy was absent.

She was standing on an enormous platform. There was no roof, or walls, or even a sky. It was true nothingness. The only source of light was from the platform below her, which was made of an ornate scene composed of stained glass, just like the windows she saw on some buildings back on the islands. She couldn't see what the entire scene was, and could only vaguely make out that the yellow light behind her was shaped like a…star? But the light from below she couldn't make out the shape of. On the design yellow was the only color apart from blues. Whatever it was, Sora thought, it was beautiful.

A flicker at the edge of her vision made her turn to see a sparkle that was heading her way. And suddenly she was excited, thinking this might be who she was supposed to help.

"Hey!" She called out again, louder this time, "Can you hear me?"

 _"I heard your voice,"_ the twinkle said, sounding slightly awed. " _It cut through the Darkness around me."_

She let out a small trill of excitement at the twinkle as it approached, and she stood on her tiptoes and reached out her hands to try and catch it. It continued to speak.

 _"All alone, I followed the sound, into a sea of Light. And I found myself here with you."_

The globe of light seemed to settle into her grasp, though it didn't feel like she was holding anything. All she could sense from it was warmth. Her eyes grew round at seeing it, and rounder still that she was holding it.

 _"You gave me something back when I needed it most. A second chance."_

"I did?"

And she couldn't see the light change at all, but somehow, she could sense it was nodding.

 _"But…now I have to go back to sleep again."_

At the voice's mournful tone, she frowned. "Are you sad?"

It didn't answer her question, and instead asked, " _Would you mind if I stayed here, with you?"_

"Sure, if it'll make you feel better!"

 _"Thank you."_

Sora couldn't explain it, but it seemed relieved at this, and hopeful.

She tried bringing her hands to her heart to pull the twinkle of light in, and it followed. The light disappeared into her with one last flash, and she folded her hands over her chest and closed her eyes, feeling the last dregs of warmth from it.

After a moment she opened her eyes. The sky was back, alive with all its stars, and the stained-glass platform she had stood upon was replaced with sand. Sora could hear the distant crash of the waves. She was on Destiny Islands again.

"Well?" Riku asked. She glanced over to see him watching with curiosity.

"Ya know, I think it worked." Was all she said, and they both said nothing more, looking back up to the sky.

Amidst the dark blue and countless glimmers of light, three stars flashed together, brighter than all the others.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _9 years and 6 months until the fall of Destiny Islands_

 _1 hour until the fall of Radiant Garden_

Her third earliest memory began with a storm.

In the days leading up to it, those Unversed had begun appearing all over the city in greater numbers, and nobody knew what to do. The guards had their hands full with dealing with them, on top of the vast numbers of people disappearing recently, and they hadn't been able to handle the threat anywhere near as effectively as that strange woman and the mouse had been able to.

It had been many days since Kairi was allowed to go outside, stuck within the walls of the castle for her own safety, and she remembered the scent of lilacs coming and going without her or her grandmother being able to work in the garden again. What once had been the herald of a new season and new adventures had now become a taunting reminder.

"One day, dear," Her granny had promised, sadly. She had seemed to age rapidly within the recent months, with the stress of the Unversed and reports of strange new creatures that were found within the walls of the city. And, lately, reports of trouble with the King and his apprentices.

Kairi didn't know what was going on, and it was frustrating that nobody seemed to be willing to talk about it with her. Everyone said they didn't want to worry her, but it was worse being kept in the dark, and it felt demeaning that she wasn't allowed to know.

So here she was, stuck.

Kairi was in the middle of lessons one day with her tutor when the storm began to really rev up. All day the clouds had been threatening, making the day almost as dark as night, but nobody paid much attention to it. Storms had been getting more and more common recently, and Kairi was worried that the extra rain would drown her plants. But she still wasn't allowed to go outside, and by now the flowerbeds must have been choked with weeds long before the rain threatened them.

And apart from the storm outside, for weeks Kairi had begun to feel this weird weight at the edge of her senses. It felt a lot like when she was sensing Darkness in people, but the only Darkness that she could see clearly was that of her instructor's in front of her, and that didn't seem like the cause at all. This was a different sort of sensing, all around her now, and the threat of it made her teeth rattle and her stomach churn. It was nearly impossible to focus on anything.

Kairi was in the middle of staring blankly at the page of addition problems she had to finish, when she and her tutor looked up at the sound of shouting and the clanging of armor and swords from the hallway, getting closer. And it sounded like…her grandmother?

The door threw open, revealing that was indeed her. And over her shoulder, a man Kairi only vaguely recognized accompanied by a few guards. It was Xehanort, one of the newest apprentices of King Ansem and the leader of the more questionable experiments in the castle's basement labs that she had overheard whispers of.

Kairi, personally, had never liked him from the beginning. With other people whose Hearts were more saturated with Darkness than usual, she'd been guarded with them, though cordial. She had usually made it a point to try and see the good in others, and if there wasn't much Light, to try and be understanding of how their Darkness came to spread—With the disappearances lately, she'd seen people whose Hearts were shining with Light start to dim when a child or a sibling vanished. And in the people whose Hearts were already dim in the first place who had lost someone, dark thickets would bloom.

But Xehanort? He was different. He was first discovered passed out in the courtyard months prior and didn't know anything of himself but his own name. But his amnesia didn't hold him back from quickly climbing the ranks to become the impromptu lead of the apprentices. From there, he pushed the ethical boundaries of the experiments to levels the King had found distasteful, causing the rift between King Ansem and his apprentices that had been fueling much of the castle gossip.

But the strangest part about him was his Heart. Apprentice Xehanort had two of them.

One was blacker than midnight, more entrenched in Darkness than any Kairi had ever seen, and it terrified her. It was a Darkness that seemed to have a life of its own.

And the other Heart she could only barely see. It was just like lifting a piece of paper with drawings on both sides up to the sun and seeing the ghost of the art on the other side show through with the light. On one side was the Dark Heart, but just beyond it, bound in chains and weeping, was the dim Light of the second Heart. It was tinged red and purple, like the last thin resigned stripe of sunset on the horizon as evening arrived.

Seeing the lead apprentice now was like looking into an eclipse. The Darkness that had been pulling at the edge of her senses seemed to be attracted to him, intermingling with the blackness of his Hearts. Kairi was beginning to space out again, with the nausea starting to grow worse and evolve into lightheadedness, and she tried to listen past the static in her head to what her grandmother was shouting.

"—ri! Kairi! Come with us, now!"

Kairi blinked slowly, trying to process the words. Her tutor scowled and shook his head in confusion, enquiring, "What could possibly be going on-?" before an ear-splitting _CRACK_ rang out, impossibly close, and they all jumped.

That is, except for Xehanort.

Adrenaline cleared Kairi's senses immediately, and she knocked over her chair to race to her grandmother and clutched to her hand. Her grandmother held onto her tightly and pressed her close to her side with an iron grip, her mouth pressed in a thin line.

"It's this way. Follow me." Xehanort said, and turned to quickly navigate down the halls, which as the group progressed farther from the classroom Kairi could see their former splendor had been freshly marred with long claw-marks and dark stains on the wallpaper, guards' weapons and raiments laying abandoned here and there. The more distance traveled, the more destruction there was. They passed a fallen chandelier, their footsteps crunching with the glass underfoot. From somewhere distantly behind them rang out the clamor of weapons and shouts. And then, a roar.

"What was that?" Kairi inquired, and fearfully looked behind them, "Grandma? What's happening?"

"The King is dead," A guard answered. Her tutor sucked in a gasp.

"Heavens, he's _dead?_ What, I," He floundered, and nearly tripped over a forgotten spear in their path, before regaining his voice and saying, "How?"

"That's what one of the guards said. Braig, or whatever his name was. He said another one of those creatures the apprentices had been experimenting on had escaped and killed the King. Saw his body dissolve into that black smoke we've been seeing so much of."

Kairi thought, _Darkness?_ But she didn't dare say a word. She peered at the white-haired man—Xehanort—that was leading them down the hallway, who hadn't spoken since beckoning them to follow him. She didn't have to turn to know that everyone in the group was doing the same, their looks laced with suspicion. Kairi felt her grandmother's grip on her tighten as they turned another corner and down a flight of stairs.

The guard continued, "Fifteen minutes ago, we saw the first of those things break down the doors to the laboratory. It was huge, unlike the descriptions of the creatures we've been getting in reports from citizens who had the misfortune of encountering them in the city. And it had this strange symbol on its chest, like a heart. The beast took down half a squadron of guards with one swipe, I've never seen anything like it," He shuddered, "And since then we've been trying to get as many civilians out as we can and hold those monsters off for as long as possible, but we haven't been having much luck."

"Where are we going?" Kairi spoke up.

This time it was Xehanort who answered, in an eerie monotone. "The laboratory."

" _What?!_ " Kairi and the tutor exclaimed simultaneously.

"You tell us about those beasts that have destroyed so much already, who can shove aside over a dozen trained guards like it's nothing, and you lead us right to their lair?!" He yelled, his face twisting with fear.

Kairi turned to her grandmother, desperately, and begged, "Grandma, please don't make me go down there, why can't we just leave the castle?"

The woman released her hold on Kairi and patted her on the head in attempt to calm her with one hand, still holding her hand with the other. Her grandmother seemed to age another decade in an instant, her form bent with the weight of resignation and dread.

"She's got a point," The teacher agreed, and looked between the few guards that escorted the group, "Why are we going into the basement? There is a vast number of exits out of the castle, why aren't we going outside?"

The guards nervously glanced towards one another, tightening their grips on their spears. One finally responded.

"None of the civilians we've escorted out there have survived. Guards, too." He nervously cleared his throat before saying, "The creatures have stopped coming from the laboratory, but they're now destroying the city and everyone in it as we speak. The only hope we have of getting people out is a portal that the apprentices managed to open using their research, that they say leads to other worlds."

"It's true, Apprentice Xehanort showed me." Her grandmother spoke, as she looked down at Kairi and tried to give her a smile, but all Kairi could focus on was the worry in her gaze, "He opened up one in front of me and showed how it can transport anyone and anything. It stung a little, to go through, but I saw another world on the other side. No monsters, just sand, and waves. You'll be safe there, dear."

"But what about you?" She responded. Her grandmother smiled sadly.

"I'll join you when I can."

"Why can't you come with m—" Kairi started to ask but gasped at another rumble from somewhere in the castle. It seemed to be from far above. And from there, more rumbling started, sustained, and it felt like it was getting closer.

"We need to move! Now!" One guard shouted, and everyone broke into a dead run. Her grandmother tried to gain speed over the brisk walk she had been doing, but only managed to hobble. It didn't take long until they were closer to the back of the group.

"It's just one more turn until we're there." Xehanort called out, and the group managed to get a burst in speed. Kairi and her grandmother lagged farther behind.

And all along they felt that thunder of countless monstrous footsteps.

 _Just a bit more,_ Kairi hoped, still hyped up on terror and all the adrenaline that came with it. They made the turn, and she clipped the edge of the wall hard as she did so, her shoulder aching. But she didn't think about it, couldn't afford to, not when the doors were right there just at the end of the hall and she was too terrified to look at what was behind.

And then they were there. The guards threw open the metal doors and they raced inside past the maze of grates, the guards switching them on to barricade against their pursuers as they went. Once they reached the innermost room of the laboratory they hastily constructed a barricade against the doors using whatever they could find in the mess of the room, from ripped out chunks of machinery to books to chairs and desks. And then, from behind them, they heard laughter.

It was a man Kairi had never seen before. He was menacing, even in the familiar guards' uniform. A black eyepatch covered part of his face, with his dark hair slicked back to reveal the pointed tips of his ears. A deep, brutal-looking scar tore across his cheek and came close to his remaining eye, which was a gold color Kairi had never seen on anyone else before. He was reclining lazily against the wall with both of his arms crossed, a crossbow-like weapon in each hand. Both of his index fingers were on the triggers. He glanced at each of them, before settling on Xehanort. He gave the group a toothy grin.

"I knew you were still in there somewhere, Terra," He crowed, "The old man told us to just pitch the girl and see where she ended up, but it figures a bleeding heart like you would try and help some useless civvies, too."

"Braig!" A guard shouted, angrily raising his spear. Braig barely lifted an arm and fired a crossbow without looking. It rang out with a metallic sound, and Kairi heard a dull wet thud as it finally collided with the desk behind the guard in the barricade, the man crumpling to the floor holding his side at the edge of her sight. She heard her grandmother gasp and before moving to turn Kairi away from the body before she could see clearly what happened.

Xehanort opened and closed his mouth, a new look of apprehension in his brown eyes. And as Kairi watched him, the strangest thing happened in his Hearts: It was as if, for a moment, that ghost Heart under the eclipse became a little clearer, a little Lighter. The reds and purples of that Heart flashed to goldenrod yellow. He finally spoke in less of a monotone, "We could experiment with the portals with them. We could see where they end up at, and it'll give us an idea of where she'll go."

Braig gave a harsh bray of laughter. "Come on, you and I both know she'll end up somewhere completely different. You said so yourself, she's not like them, and that'll change the path."

Xehanort—or was it Terra? —opened and closed his mouth, trying to formulate a response. And before he could say anything, her grandmother spoke.

"I don't care what happens to me. Please, just save my granddaughter."

The corners of Braig's mouth curled more as he gave a cheer. "There we go! Ladies and gents, please give it up for our first volunteer," He gestured to her with his crossbows and she flinched. "I would clap for you, but I kind of have a hostage situation to maintain just in case softy here doesn't stay in line. Hopefully you understand." He finished with a simpering glance.

Kairi looked up at her and implored, "Grandma, no," but she gently shushed her.

"Kairi, dear, my time is behind me. I brought you here to make sure you were safe, and that is all I want. Nothing else is important."

"But—" She started to protest, but her grandmother shook her head harshly at her, and the girl went quiet. Kairi could feel her eyes growing wet.

"I knew it," Her teacher spat out, "I knew it! You traitors orchestrated this whole thing! You killed the king, you let those monsters loose upon the city, it was all you!"

"Hole in one, chump," Braig replied.

"And you," He rounded on Xehanort, "I knew there was something off about you from the time you started doing those ghastly experiments! His majesty ordered you to stop, but you were too greedy for knowledge or power or whatever it is you two are after. Were the other apprentices in on this, too?"

Braig gave an exaggerated look to the apprentice, but Xehanort gave no response.

That only seemed to confirm her teacher's words. He looked too angry to speak.

"Why?" It was the remaining guard. He rose slowly from where he had kneeled beside his fallen comrade. "Why did you do it?"

Braig answered, "And that, my friend, is privileged information."

And then he looked to Xehanort, his gold eye gleaming in the dimmed light. "Well? What are you waiting for? Open the portal already."

The apprentice raised a hand to the wall shakily but seemed to hesitate. His eyes flickered again between the group with an almost guilty expression, and Kairi saw the ghost Heart flash again. Braig sighed.

"Can't muster the nerve, huh?" He sauntered over to the control panel on the far wall, unnoticed amidst the rest of the wreckage. "Then what if I," He dropped a crossbow to the floor as he lifted one hand to a lever, saying, "Raised the stakes?"

And then he yanked the lever down, and along the adjoining wall a large hole that was shaped like a heart that ended in three points at the tip began to crackle. Then, a smear of colors danced across the archway like an oil slick. And that's when all hell broke loose.

Creatures began to pour out of the hole, now portal, in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but every last one of them had a curious red heart-shaped emblem on their chest that was crossed with barbed vines, and every last one of them was hungry. The group cried out, all but Braig and Xehanort, and Kairi desperately backed away from a small black bug-like thing that turned its glowing yellow eyes on her. She was reminded all too much of a similar encounter with the Unversed months prior, except this time, she wasn't sure if Aqua would show up at the last moment to save her.

Xehanort's eyes widened, and he opened the portal immediately, and it settled on the wall closest to him, black and roiling and tendrils reaching out around it.

"Kairi, run!" Her grandmother shouted, and the creatures began to converge on her. Kairi's vision blurred with horrified tears, and she backed away from the creatures, and felt herself be picked up. It was the apprentice.

"I don't know where you'll end up," He started, and Kairi sobbed as he rushed her to the waiting portal, "But you're going to be okay. You're going to find the keybearer. And wherever you go, Light will follow you. I've seen it. Lead us to the key to everything. Now go!" He shouted out, tossing her into the portal, and it closed behind her.

And all Kairi knew next was that she was falling, and falling, and falling. The Darkness lapped at her, trying to grip, but it couldn't. Everything was cold, prickly, but it didn't hurt.

She felt something tugging at her, but not physically. It was tugging at something deep inside the center of herself.

Her Heart.

 _"One day when you're in trouble, the Light within you will lead you to the Light of another."_

The familiar words rang out in her head, and Kairi felt warm.

And then there was Light.

And, finally, Kairi knew no more.

* * *

 **SORA**

 _9 Years and 6 months until the fall of Destiny Islands_

Just like how a rain shower begins with a single drop, a meteor shower begins with the twinkle of a single point of light, falling towards the earth.

Sora and Riku had spent the day playing, as children often do, making sand castles and sand battlements and then mock fighting on the shore to practice their skills as the knights for the castles they made. The day was long, and the night had grown late, neither child really noticing the change in light until the flicker of streetlights turning on for the evening had caught their eye. Just as they both fell quiet at the sight of it, for it was often the mark of a gloomy separation, another twinkle sparked at the corner of their eyes and they looked up.

It was a shooting star. Whatever despondence they felt from the streetlights was immediately out of their thoughts as they marveled at the sight. Sora gave an audible gasp.

"Woah," Riku marveled. And then the glimmer left as fast as it arrived.

"Make a wish, make a wish!" Sora called out to him, and he grinned before they both scrunched their eyes shut with hope.

Sora still had her eyes closed too tightly to notice the continued dance of lights across the sky, too busy trying to figure out what to wish for. But Riku noticed.

"Sora, look," Was all he said as she opened her eyes and followed where he was pointing.

It was another shooting star.

And another.

And another.

It started slow, like the first few drops of rain in a storm, and then those first few rays leapt through the sky began to multiply. Three, twelve, too many to count sped across the horizon, and yet more continued to appear. Slowly, Sora's excitement dissolved into a fearful awe.

"Riku…What's going on? What's happening?"

For several moments he had no response. "I don't know."

And that's when Sora really began to be afraid. Riku almost _always_ had the answer: He read all the time, he was older (even if only a year older, but that felt like an eternity to kids), he was supposed to know everything. But now there was finally something he didn't know. And that was terrifying.

She looked over to see his gaze still glued to the sky, Riku's face lit up hauntingly from the unnatural light of the shooting stars. The crown pendant around his neck had peeked out of his collar and reflected the atmosphere.

Sora looked back to the sky. Great smears of light were streaked down the horizon, illuminating what few clouds there were from behind. The meteor shower showed no signs of letting up. And then one terrifying thought occurred to her.

"Riku," Her voice wavered, and she tried again. "Riku, what if one hits the islands? Will we die?"

At those words Riku whipped his face down to look at her. His expression was determined.

"No," He answered, and took her hand in his own. "We won't."

"How do you know?"

"If a shooting star comes this way, I'll protect you. I won't let it come near us."

The notion was encouraging, but then another issue came to mind. Because a shooting star was a force of nature, which meant that it had to be impossibly huge, insurmountable. And Riku, well, even though he seemed so much older and more capable at times, he was still just a kid. Just like her.

And sometimes she was starkly reminded of that, like just a minute ago.

"How are you going to do that?"

At this he paused and looked down in thought. Then he peered at the wooden swords they had left in the sand. Riku let go of her hand to lean over and reach for the handle of one.

"With this," Riku announced, "Maybe this is what we've been practicing for. The real test. We pretend to be knights all the time, so what would be different about this?" He said with a reassuring smile.

"And to make sure I don't forget this promise when we grow up, here." He said and buried the tip of the toy sword into the sand, so he could free his hands. Riku reached around behind his neck and undid the clasp on the necklace he wore. The crown pendant sparkled with the movement. And then, once the necklace was free, he picked up the sword again in one hand and held out the necklace to Sora with the other.

"Take it."

"What?" Sora gasped.

"Take it," Riku repeated.

She looked to the necklace and back to him. That necklace was his most favorite thing, she knew. It was the first implication of magic they'd ever found that showed magic wasn't impossible (and for Riku she knew it was only suggestion that maybe his parents cared, once, as equally impossible as that seemed. That is, if they were indeed the ones to give it to him, which was the only logical reason for its appearance the two could come up with).

But then again, until an hour or so ago they would have thought that a meteor shower on this scale was impossible, too. Perhaps the time had come for impossible things to happen.

But for him to offer her something like this was an incredible gesture.

"But…Why? This means a lot to you, right?" Sora was bewildered. "And what does it have to do with forgetting the promise?"

"It'll be a reminder. Every time you look at it, you'll think of me. And every time I look at it, I'll think of you. And I will remember my promise. It can connect us."

And just like that, everything she feared right then seemed to melt away. It was hard to keep being afraid of anything with this. And with the fear gone, a surge of hope and resolution rose in her Heart.

Because Sora and Riku? United, they could handle anything. Nobody and nothing could defeat them. And that was a fact of life, like how the sky is blue, grass is green, and Sora and Riku were unbeatable when they were together. And sure, they were just kids, but that wasn't for forever, right?

"Then I promise to protect you too." She vowed. "And then the necklace will remind both of us."

Sora reached out for the pendant and wrapped its chain around her neck, pulling the ends of it forward so she could see the clasp as she fastened it. Once it was done, she let go of it, and the crown bounced against her sternum, still almost awkwardly big for her. But that didn't keep it from being the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, and it didn't dampen the meaning of it. Sora knew she'd wear it forever.

She grinned at him, and then bent down to reach for the other sword and shook off the sand that dusted it. Sora held it aloft in one hand and gripped Riku's hand with the other.

Riku grinned back, and there they stood, watching the meteor shower, hand in hand.

It wasn't long after that that even the bright light of the shooting stars couldn't keep them awake, and both kids' eyes began to burn with tiredness. Sora figured her mother would be wondering where they were, and they mutually decided to depart. The meteor shower seemed to abate by that point, still lighting up the sky, but it had passed its crescendo, and the overwhelming brightness had dimmed into a more tolerable glow. Fewer star trails lined the atmosphere.

They both walked up to the fenced entrance, their footsteps muffled with the sand. Moths danced around the lights on the streets and the porchlights in the neighborhood beyond. And when Riku began to split up from Sora, for his house was in one direction and hers in the other, she stopped him.

"Wait," Sora called out, and fumbled with the toy sword in her hands when he turned back towards her.

"Yeah?"

"Could you…Do you want to sleep over? 'Cuz it's, it's getting kinda dark, and those shooting stars were kinda spooky."

Riku eyed her for a moment before giving a slow, wily grin.

"Are you afraid of the dark? Is that it?"

"No! No, not at all! I'm not a scaredy cat!"

"I think you _are_ a scaredy cat."

"No!" Sora protested, and stomped a foot in frustration. "Ugh, nevermind! Forget I said anything," She turned around to begin walking home, and Riku laughed and fell into step beside her.

"It's okay," He said, "I'll protect you from the dark, too."

Sora could feel her cheeks get hot from embarrassment and was thankful that he couldn't see her face too well in that moment as they walked to her house. She mumbled a thanks, and whether Riku could or couldn't hear it, he didn't respond.

Later that night, they stayed up in Sora's bed—Because she really was a scaredy cat, she admitted later as she asked him to sleep in the bed with her. She said she'd be afraid of having nightmares. And Riku went along with it, because they were both young enough to fit in the same bed with room to spare and not feel weird about it.

And in the morning, when her mother came to wake her up, Mina was not surprised to see them curled up together. She didn't wake them, and instead decided to tiptoe back out of the room with one hand covering the smile on her face, recalculating how much batter she'd need to make extra pancakes.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _9 Years and 6 months to the fall of Destiny Islands_

The first thing she knew was the sound of waves.

Kairi moved to get up and looked around to find herself on a shoreline somewhere. Along the sand were ferns and palms that bowed under the weight of star-shaped fruit. Wherever she was, it was morning, and the temperature had already started to climb. She breathed in and inhaled the smell of salt. Another inhale, and she realized she smelled like smoke, but for the life of her Kairi couldn't remember why.

She was exhausted, but she couldn't remember the reason for that either. Her muscles ached, her lungs hurt, her heart was beating so hard it was shaking her whole body, and it was as if she'd run a marathon but she had just woken up.

She sat there for a while slowly being lulled into a daze from fatigue and the clamor of the ocean, until she heard approaching voices. The first she heard was a young girl, maybe close in age to her.

"…Mom, mom, come on, I saw a weird flash over here…"

A woman's voice responded, "Sunny, I need to go to work soon, are you sure it wasn't just the water?"

"It's true, Ms. Shimamoto, I didn't see what Sora did, but some girl just appeared on the beach when I turned around." A boy, this time. Equally as young as the girl.

"Riku, dear, I've told you to just call me Mina," The woman reminded him fondly. Kairi rubbed at her eyes to get the salt and sand out of them. "And if there really is a child there, I'm sure her parents must be close by—Oh!"

Past the waves Kairi could hear the sound of footsteps shuffling through the sand towards her. She blearily looked over and was blinded by the sun.

"Hey!" The girl, the one she heard before, called out to her. She was asking questions a mile a minute. "Who are you? Where did you come from? What was that flash? Where are your mom and dad?"

Mina hushed her and said, "Sora, let me handle this."

Kairi could only blink, once, twice, trying to focus past the sun. Her head was swimming. Some distant part of her mind was distracted by the red color of the girl's shorts, the whiteness of the sand. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mina squat down to her eye level and rest a hand on her shoulder.

"Sweetie? Do you know where your parents might be?"

Kairi took a moment longer to gain her bearings. Her vision had stopped blurring, and she was able to focus on the woman talking to her. She seemed kind, with brown hair and eyes, and casually dressed. Her Heart was like looking at late afternoon Light.

"I don't know."

She tilted her head in question. "Do you have an idea of where they went? They must have brought you here,"

Kairi began to nervously pull at the lip of the clogs she was wearing and focused on the feel of the rubber in her grip. "I don't know," She repeated, "I just remember waking up."

Mina went quiet at that. Kairi heard the two children at her side shifting, and the wooden swords they were holding made a tapping noise as they did so. Their curiosity was so palpable she could practically feel it.

"Here. I'm going to call the police, and they'll be happy to send someone over to help, does that sound okay?" Mina asked, and Kairi nodded and looked down. "I'm just going to get up for a minute to call them, but I'll stay with you the whole time, sweetie. Things are going to turn out okay, I promise."

She stood and walked a couple of feet away to make the call but didn't go far. Kairi stared after her and pulled at her shoes again.

"Hey," The girl said, once the woman was out of earshot. "Do you really not remember anything? At all?"

Kairi only shook her head.

"What about your name? I'm Sora."

"Sora," She murmured, testing out the name to remember it. "I'm Kairi."

"Kairi! That's perfect!" Sora cheered, "Sora, sky, Kairi, sea, Riku, land! Oops, right, this is Riku, by the way," She finished sheepishly, gesturing at the boy who then waved.

"Hey," He greeted with a smile, and Kairi did a double-take. He seemed normal enough if you only looked at his green eyes, but it was his hair she was startled by. It was silver.

Images flashed in her mind. _(A man with silver hair and a lab coat leading her down a battered hallway, a scarred grin and the flash of a gold-colored eye, the twinkle of a promise bound in magic in the midst of Darkness as far as she could see. And through it all, the scent of lilacs.)_ But as quickly as she saw them, the visions were gone again.

She took a moment to glance beyond his visage into his Heart, just the same as she had done with Mina. Inside there was Light, but his was different. His was more like the tired gleam of the sun as it began to descend towards night, clouds warning on the horizon. _Be careful,_ instinct cautioned.

Kairi hadn't taken a moment to inspect Sora when she first spoke, so she looked to her next. The first thing she noticed were how Sora's eyes were almost painfully blue, her unruly hair matching Mina's in color. And then she looked beyond into Sora's Heart…or rather, Hearts. Riku and Mina both only had one in each of them, but Sora had two. _Ghost Heart,_ that quiet voice of instinct and chained memory in her head murmured again, _eclipse_. She didn't understand what Ghost Heart was supposed to mean, but she knew eclipse implied one of the Hearts was being covered, which it wasn't. It was like staring into a day with two suns, and Kairi almost had to squint at it. One of the suns was odd—one looked normal enough, with a slight stripe of Darkness that hadn't worried Kairi as it seemed typical, but the other was almost overwhelmingly bright. So bright, it seemed artificial, like staring at a lightbulb.

Kairi suddenly remembered that she was staring at them, even if only for a moment or two, but it was enough to make her embarrassed.

She stammered, "It's, um, it's nice to meet you both,"

"Hey, don't be shy! Your name matches us, that means we're destined to be friends, right?" Sora joked.

"Sunny," Mina warned, and walked back over to the three. "I hope you're not overwhelming her over there."

"I'm not! Her name's Kairi, mom. That means she matches me and Riku!"

"Kairi, huh?" Mina looked over at her and her expression softened. "What a pretty name. It's lovely to meet you, I'm Mina." She glanced down to her phone, checking the time, before saying, "The police should be here in a minute or two, they diverted an officer that was close by. They'll be able to help you find your parents, sweetie."

Her parents. The more Kairi thought about it, the less she could remember. She wasn't even sure if she'd be able to recognize her parents if they appeared, or anyone else she was related to. All she knew of herself was her name.

 _Wait a minute_ she thought to herself, thinking over the first words she heard the girl say.

"Did you say you saw a flash?" Kairi asked, looking to Sora.

Sora got even more excited, if that were possible, her eyes widening as she clutched her hands together. "I did! Oh gosh, I mostly saw it out of the corner of my eye, 'cuz me and Riku were still getting ready for a duel, but I totally did! It was like, like a big black circle?" Sora had a quizzical expression and paused in effort to remember clearly, "I thought it was an animal or something for a second until I turned to look and saw you lying there like you had just fallen down and the thing vanished. Maybe it was a portal to another world!"

Kairi slowly took it in but couldn't make much sense of the information. It had to have been before she woke up. She looked between the three and saw that while Sora was looking back at her with an expression of curiosity, Riku was staring off into the horizon with a contemplative look. Mina, though, was disbelieving.

"A portal? Sora, that seems a little farfetched. I'm sure she just got separated from whoever she was with before you saw."

"Nuh-uh! She wasn't there when we first walked over here, just ask Riku!"

"It's true, Ms. Shim—Um, Mina."

"See, Mom? And if she were with someone and they left her behind, which sounds kinda mean, they had to be running away really, really fast so we wouldn't see them! And what about that black thingie I saw?"

"I'm sure that was just a trick of the light or maybe a bird or something, Sunny, though not seeing even one other person around _is_ a little concerning—" Whatever Mina was going to say next was quieted at the sound of a police car pulling up, lights and sirens off apart from the headlights, and an officer got out. After showing her badge and identifying herself, the officer turned to Mina.

"Ma'am, which one of these kids is the one you reported?"

At this, Mina gestured to Kairi, saying sadly, "Her. It's all as I told the lady on the phone, she doesn't remember anything except her name and waking up."

"Really? Nothing?" The officer's stoic expression went concerned as she glanced down at Kairi. And then after a moment she bent over towards the girl to assure her, "I'm sure they're somewhere close by, honey, we're just going to go knock on some doors and see if any houses or streets look familiar in a minute."

At Kairi's nod, the officer then bid farewell to the group and she and Kairi began to walk towards the car.

Behind them, Sora shouted "If you live close, you'll be going to the same school as us in the fall! Find me in class!"

Kairi didn't hear what Riku said in response, but judging by the tone it was something sarcastic, and Sora's indignant shout and her mother's laughter were the last things she heard before closing the door.

 _'Maybe it was a portal to another world!'_

Another world…

She smelled smoke again, and other memories seeped into her mind again: The thunder of supernatural footsteps she couldn't recognize. The swirl of colors on the surface of a gateway. Fear cresting into panic.

That portal going to another world the girl had speculated, what was her name…Sora? Maybe she could have been right. Where Kairi was before, assuming she really was from another world, she couldn't have been safe. More than likely, she had been left here for her own safety.

Yet wherever Kairi was now, she may have been safe, but she was alone.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _8 Years until the fall of Destiny Islands_

(It took time, but just as Aqua's charm led her to the Mayor and his wife being her foster parents, so too did it lead her back to those two children she met on her very first morning on Destiny's Islands.)

Little did she know, the Mayor's home resided only a couple of blocks away from Sora and Riku's, and so on the first day of class for her (though really, it was closer to the middle of the school year than the beginning of it, as being in the foster system and going from house to house didn't make for very consistent attendance in school, considering she was changing school districts so often), Kairi had the good luck of spotting a familiar tousled head of brown hair, the scenario complete with an unoccupied seat beside Sora.

(And Kairi would never know this either, but the charm's effects went even deeper than simply placing her on Destiny's Islands during an hour of need, or even making sure to place her with the more optimal foster families on the list. That charm would make sure she ended up as close as possible to Sora and Riku as much as possible, and by extension, the keyblade, the bearer of which would be tasked with protecting Kairi's Heart when the time came. And the charm _knew_ the time would come, as part of its construction gave it the ability to tell when forces were aligning that would make for trouble, for the charm's caster, Aqua, was trying to quell those forces at this very moment.)

(The time would come when even Aqua fell to the Darkness she fought, and then the charm would fail, but today was not that day.)

The two immediately recognized each other and became fast friends. Kairi hadn't been able to bond much with any of the other foster kids she came across while in the program, whether by lack of common ground or through lack of time before one or the other would be moved elsewhere. If it weren't for the Mayor and his wife, who she so far had liked a lot, Kairi would have felt just as alone now as she did on that first morning.

But Sora, she quickly realized, was a social butterfly. Like some sort of real life Pollyanna who could be amiable with anyone except the most steadfast curmudgeons. And somewhere along the way, in quickly hushed classroom conversations and playground fun, they became best friends. And through Sora, Kairi came to know Riku, then Selphie, and Wakka and Tidus, and everyone else that was on the crew that was often over at the play island on weekends.

Kairi was a little daunted by how close they all already were with one another, as apparently most them already were friends from being in the same daycare Sora's mom ran, but they welcomed her readily.

And over time, Kairi and Sora and Riku became a little trio of their own. Best friends, closer than siblings. The months passed by in a blur of sleepovers, hangouts, minutes stolen away at school when they were all three able to be together. It passed by in a blur of prank wars and video games (where Kairi found she preferred to watch rather than play them), daredevil stunts, spars, days where they did everything and days where they did nothing at all. And it passed by in late-night talks with the windows open, feeling the breeze and quickly hushed listening for the footsteps of parents to come and tell them to go to bed.

It's in these talks that she shared what little she remembered of her past, which still seems so incomplete, but they marveled at it regardless. She would tell about all of the flowers she's remembered seeing in momentary flashes, how she hates the scent of lilacs now because they make her want to cry.

And Riku and Sora shared so much of themselves in return. About Riku's broken home, Sora's father dying in an accident Sora can hardly remember. And the little things, like how Sora's favorite color was red and Riku's was yellow, and how Sora was weirded out by how Riku could just bite into ice cream without his teeth hurting—and Kairi, they found, could do it too, and they turned to Sora with equally ice-cream laden grins as she called them crazy.

This is how Kairi had finally found the home she had been looking for. In the cozy corner of an island, with two parents that loved her just as she loved them back. In the companionship of two friends that she could share anything with, whose company and trust would come to help her remember bits and pieces of a story she loved, a story about a Light within the Darkness, a Light that never goes out.

The times were peaceful now. She was safe. And she was finally home.

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _6 Years until the fall of Destiny Islands_

One morning later on, all the kids were at the play island. Tidus and Selphie were fiddling with her new jump-rope, sometimes using it for its intended purpose and the rest of the time seeing how it fared as a ranged weapon. Kairi was showing Wakka different net knots she'd made and how to tie them—Riku remembered he mentioned something about trying to make a net to recover some stray blitzballs he'd lost in the cove—and Riku and Sora were trying to spar.

Key word being 'trying'. The events from the night before were still fresh in his mind, and while it wasn't bad enough to distract him entirely, it was enough to throw him off his game. Waking up with an unsteady feeling that morning, like he'd woken up in an alternate universe, was enough to make Riku slip up once, twice, and Sora finally called it when she'd landed a third strike. She took a moment to scrutinize him.

"Bad day?" Sora asked the old question, recognizing his downcast mien.

"Yeah."

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

He took a moment to think about it. "Not yet."

"Okay."

They stood side by side and watched the seagulls fly over the ocean, and neither of them said anything for a long while.

"My dad…" Riku started, and saw Sora turn her head to his in the corner of his sight. "…he left last night. My mom told me this morning. They had a really big fight again last night, and I was stupid and said something and it just made everything worse—"

"You were _not_ stupid for saying anything, Riku," Sora insisted, and he looked to see she had a stubborn expression. "And none of it was your fault. Just saying things never makes it okay for him to hurt you like he does."

"He didn't hurt me, this time." He responded and saw her turn relieved. "I got away. But I heard them keep yelling at each other and eventually I heard the front door slam and his car driving away. And this morning my mom just said he decided he won't be with us anymore, so I guess he's gone for good." Riku shrugged.

"That's good!" And then Sora hesitated. "That…that _is_ a good thing, right?"

"I don't know," Riku answered honestly. The event itself would be considered a good thing by any assessment, but he didn't feel happy about it, and yet he didn't feel mad or sad about it either. At the moment, he wasn't sure what he felt at all.

Riku didn't know what the future held now, but he knew there was no more injury to be found in it, and that in itself was a good thing.

It took him a moment to realize that a small part of what he was feeling was hope.

"Well, either way, you still have your key, right? The one mom gave you?" Sora asked.

In response, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his keyring and held up the spare key to Sora's house he had been given a couple of years before with a small smile.

She smiled too. "Good. Whatever happens, you will always a place with us."

"I know."

They both went quiet again, the conversation ended, but this time the silence between them was a little more comfortable. Neither the boy nor the girl did anything else but watch the waves and the seagulls gliding lazily above and listen to the din of the other kids sparring, playing, and making memories.

For the moment, the islands felt a little less small. And the oceans felt a little less like the walls to a cage.

Yesterday may have been a bad day, Riku thought to himself. But maybe today was going to be okay.

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE**

YOU GUYS DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW EXCITED I AM TO BE FINALLY UPLOADING THIS DAMN THING.

Okay, backstory, I have been working on this fanfic for months. And I've been wanting a fic that was basically a fem!Sora novelization of the games for longer than that...like, years. I'm not kidding. You don't know desperation until you're staring down a blank word document, you guys.

Except I wanted a novelization of the games that would be like how the games should totally be (not necessarily with rule 63 Sora, that's just me going pure self-indulgence because I am hopelessly addicted to rule 63 in general) where KAIRI ACTUALLY GOT SOME DANG CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, and WE GET TO SEE EXACTLY WHAT WENT DOWN WITH THE FALL OF RADIANT GARDEN FOR PETE'S SAKE (it's absurd: Eight games, a mobile game, a movie, and we still don't know precisely what happened. That's a giant plot point to leave out, and meanwhile they think it's important to explain why Mickey didn't have a shirt on in the first game compared to 2.8.) and Riku having better reasons to be a turd in the first game beyond what they gave us. He gets better, true, and has a good ol' atonement arc over the games, but they never really discussed why he jump-started the islands' apocalypse in the first place. Oh, and I wanted to fix some of the ridiculously robotic dialogue of the english translation too.

So I guess this is my attempt to answer my own questions! Or, fill in the blanks with my own ideas until canon might or might not retroactively fill in the blanks, which it has an awful habit of doing, in which case I will update this work as needed.

Also I would like to give a gigantic shoutout to Briry18, whose work 'If I was Yours' was the very first Genderswap!Sora fic I have ever found (I literally screamed a little bit when I discovered it)(seriously it's good), and helped inspire me to finally get off my butt and make this. Somewhere along the way I forgot that the real point of participating in fandom is to make yourself happy, and judging by the current state of affairs of an alarming number of fandoms I think lots of other people forgot that too. So, this is me making myself happy. And if there's anyone else out there like me, who wants a fic like this, I hope I'm making you happy too, even just a tiny bit.


	2. Chapter 1: The Fall of Destiny Islands

If you're one of those people that are allergic to prologue chapters, I *strongly* recommend you keep your Epipen on standby and read the prologue chapter anyway. It gives context to quite a bit of what goes on here and helps set up for the b-plots I've got planned for the rest of the games' novelizations on top of setting up this fic. But, if you're resolutely unwilling, I can't exactly stop you, so I'll just warn ya! **  
**

ALSO! There are two illustrations with this chapter, so go to AO3 as usual to go see them!

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _1 Month until the fall of Destiny Islands_

He was getting sick of his house. He was getting sick of school. And he was really, _really_ getting sick of Destiny Islands.

Whatever magic there was on the islands, the sort of magic people talked about when they gushed about what a perfect tropical paradise this place was with that spark in their eyes, it had long lost its splendor for Riku.

(He had hoped, once, that maybe things would change. That with his dad gone, all his problems would disappear and maybe he'd have a chance at a normal life and finally see what people meant when they said this place was paradise. But the only difference that made was that the house went from too loud to too quiet, and Riku began to hurt on the inside instead.)

(But what hurts worst is the shameful fact that Riku hopes still.)

Plus nowadays, Riku didn't really have much to fear anymore like when he was small. He'd made sure he was the best amongst his peers, the fastest, the strongest, so he wouldn't have to be afraid ever again. So that nobody important to him could be afraid, if he could help it. But all of these things couldn't stop the monotony of it all. The same old shores, the nooks and crannies of the play island he'd already seen every inch of, the streets of the main islands that looked more identical than the last.

And every place he went, so long as he was stuck on the islands, there was still that memory of a time when more wounds marked him than just the ones sustained from sparring. And those memories helped keep him on edge, helped keep Riku the best by a long margin. But combined with the tedium of being stuck here when he knew for a fact there was something beyond the waves made for a boredom that burned around the edges.

As utopian as some may have thought of these islands…all of those same qualities only made for a gilded prison to the boy.

It may have sounded blasphemous, but Riku knew he wasn't the first to think such things of Destiny Islands. Long ago, so long ago the story itself seemed more urban legend than real, there was another boy once who thought the same thing. Who wasn't much older than Riku now, maybe even the same age. That boy saw the islands as a prison too. And then, somehow, he left.

They never found him, according to the hushed whispers of classmates and yellowed newspaper clippings in the library archives. He wasn't seen alive ever again and no body was ever discovered, neither on land nor in the waves. All the search parties ever discovered were footprints in the sand that just stopped suddenly. As if he disappeared mid-step.

And all of it gave Riku the idea that if that boy could get away from this place, maybe he could too.

But how? Riku couldn't exactly appear and disappear in midair unlike that man he met on the play island shore, who certainly _seemed_ to appear out of nowhere since he and Sora were over there that entire day and hadn't seen him before. Especially since that man had made his keyblade appear out of nowhere as well, with a flash of light. But then that man seemed to be a lot of other things too _(an escape, a second chance)_ but didn't turn out to be any of them. Whoever he was, with the strange uniform and the stranger name, he'd left the islands as easily as he arrived.

So that makes two people that he knew left.

And one, now that Riku thought about it, that he knew of who appeared: Kairi.

After that first day she arrived, when Sora spotted her on the shore, none of the trio had been able to find more information on where she had come from since. And Kairi didn't remember enough to give them any idea either. But they knew she had to come from somewhere outside of the islands, somewhere far beyond the ocean.

As claustrophobic as they felt, the islands weren't inescapable and unreachable. Thrice now did Riku have proof of that.

But how could he possibly leave? The myth of the boy who left all those decades ago didn't give any clues as to how he did it. The man on the shore was certainly capable of some sort of magic, judging by how he had summoned his sword, and Kairi had probably entered through some similar supernatural method if Sora's mention of the black flash she fell out of was correct. But he was just a kid, as loathe as he was to admit it. No magic in him at all.

So, if magic was out, what other options did that leave? Riku's first thought was to simply sail a boat to the other side of the ocean, but that almost sounded too easy to be feasible. There had to be a catch somewhere.

But what if there wasn't?

What if the matter of nobody knowing what was beyond the sea was as simple as nobody ever having bothered to go look? What if it really were that straightforward? The thought set him on edge with excitement. The visions of other lands that he had seen in the dreams of the door and the keyblade danced before Riku's eyes.

Before he began to get too carried away with the idea of it all, the planning, Riku had another thought: Whatever there was, beyond the edges of the islands, beyond the ocean…he didn't want to go there alone.

* * *

 **SORA**

 _4 Weeks until the fall of Destiny Islands_

Finals were coming up, and her mother was already practically breathing down her neck to make sure she passed, and even enrolled Kairi to help. So when Sora heard a knock at the front door early that afternoon's study session, she was happy for the distraction. And happier still to find that the distraction in question was Riku, who hadn't been by to visit in quite some time.

Even if he seemed to be too excited about something to talk properly.

"Riku! Hey, what are you doi—"

"Hey-do-you-want-to-help-me-make-a-raft-and-sail-to-the-outside-world-with-me-to-find-Kairi's-birthplace-and-go-on-an-adventure?"

Sora blinked once, twice. His statement came out jumbled up, the entire thing more like one word than a proper sentence, but she'd managed to understand pieces of it.

"Wait, you want me to do what?"

"Sail to the outside world."

"I got that part, but I meant before that." Sora clarified, shaking her head.

"Make a boat." Riku explained, more thinking to himself out loud than talking to her, "Most likely a raft, the shape seems easier than constructing something with a hull, and it'd be easier to extend resources."

"Okay, first things first, hi?" Sora questioned, and then grinned. "Dude, where have you been? I know we go to different schools right now, but come on, the last time you said hey was two months ago!"

"Oh, yeah, sorry about that," Riku sheepishly tucked his hair behind his ear. "I've…I've been busy. Class, clubs, college stuff. You know."

"College stuff? Riku, you're a freshman, that stuff's forever from now."

"Well we can't all be overachievers like you." He joked, and she snorted at him. "But seriously, what do you think about it? The boat?"

Sora shrugged. "I think it sounds rad, but I'd have to ask my mom. I'm not sure if she'd be down for the whole sail-to-find-the-outside-world thing, but we could maybe work with sailing to one of the other islands."

"But I mean, haven't you ever been curious of the outside world?" Riku said, "Think about it. Where did Kairi come from? You said you saw that black shape, and there she was on the beach. She wasn't there when we were walking up, right? So where did she come from? She had to have come from _somewhere,_ just think about it."

"Think about what?"

It was Kairi, sauntering up through the hallway.

"The day you arrived." Sora answered. "He's thinking about building a boat and sailing to find where you grew up before coming here."

"What?" Kairi scrunched her face a little, perplexed. "But I have no idea where that was. I barely even remember any of it. Why don't we just sail to one of the other islands as a trip?"

"That's what I said!"

"Oh come on," Riku protested, "How are _you_ not curious? And it wouldn't work if we just sailed to one of the other islands, then there'd be no point in sailing, we might as well just do a road trip instead." At Kairi's interested look at the idea of a road trip, he switched tactics. "But that'd be nothing new. We'd all know the destination, and the journey would be predictable and boring anyways. If we sailed to discover a whole new place, it would be insane! Nobody on the islands would have ever done it before! What about that?"

"It does sound pretty cool, when you put it like that." Sora trailed off with a wistful expression. Kairi scowled at her.

"It sounds _dangerous_ when he puts it like that." Kairi corrected and leveled him with a look. "A road trip would be predictable, but it would be safe. If something went wrong, then there'd be an easy way to fix it, or worst-case scenario an easy way back home. If something goes wrong, and we're a thousand miles out across the ocean, we can't just go to the closest shop or whatever to get it fixed, nor could we just ask our parents what the solution would be."

"Then we could research ahead of time for what we might run up against." Riku answered confidently. "I'm not saying we would do this completely unprepared. I've been looking up all sorts of stuff before coming to you guys: Crazy amounts of first aid things, making and repairing sails, making drinking water from seawater. Obviously, there's a lot more to consider, but if you guys were to agree and we worked together I really think we can do it."

"I'm in." Sora answered, and she and Riku shared a grin. Then she turned to Kairi and widened her eyes at the skeptical look she was getting. "What? Seriously, I like it! I've never really traveled to the other islands besides Kilika, and that was like once. Twice? Whatever, the point is, it sounds fun and we could achieve something amazing at the end of it if we get there. But even if we didn't get there and we ended up just coming back home again, it would be a whole journey. We'd be stretching our wings, being independent, y'know." She finished her statement with flourishing hand gestures, mimicking wings. She looked sheepishly at Kairi.

Kairi, in turn, chewed on her lip for a moment and sighed. "I still don't like it. There's too much that can go wrong. And Sora, you know your mom would never agree to something like this."

Sora visibly deflated and she saw Riku have a pensive look for a moment.

And then he said, "Alright. It's totally fine, just an idea. And like I said, think about it. You guys don't have to decide right now, I'll be back eventually and you can choose for sure then."

Sora gave him a hopeful look. "You'll be back? When?"

"Eventually," Riku answered, and then caved in to her pitiful look. "Fine! I'll be back next weekend. Or maybe weekend after that, I'm not sure. But one of the two. I'm busy!" He protested when her pitiful look didn't let up. "I've got two tests next week and finals are coming up. Don't you have those too? Last I checked eighth grade did, I had them last year. Aren't you studying for them?"

"We were trying to." Kairi responded. "Not much luck though. Getting her to focus on something she doesn't want to is like herding cats on fire."

"I'm not _that_ bad."

"Do you want summer school?"

"No!" She looked horrified at the thought. "No, please."

"If you fail finals then it's guaranteed." Kairi imitated cracking a whip. "Now back to work!"

"I'm going to let you guys get back to it," Riku said, "See ya."

They both bid him goodbye and closed the door. Going back to Sora's room, they sat down at the desk, and as Kairi reorganized flash cards for both of them to go through, Sora stared into space, thinking about the idea of another world, the wide-open ocean, exploring.

Kairi gave her a resigned look upon noticing her expression.

"You're not going to be getting any reviewing done today, are you."

"I promise I'll try?" She sheepishly offered.

Kairi only sighed in response.

* * *

 **SORA**

 _4 Weeks until the fall of Destiny Islands_

"Absolutely not."

"What? Mom—!"

"No. I haven't protested too much with your daredevil stunts before, because usually you quickly learn to never do them again—at least until you come up with something _else_ —but this is absurd."

"Mom, this isn't some 'daredevil stunt', this is an adventure. And besides, I don't do anything ridiculously dangerous." Sora added, "Not for a while anyway."

Her mother squinted at her. "Wasn't it you who got your shin bone fractured by riding one-wheeled on Wakka's bike down the play island scaffolding as a dare when he brought it over?"

"That was two years ago!"

"How about the time you got stung by a sea urchin because you thought it was cute and wanted it as a pet?"

"That was _five_ years ago! I was nine!"

"I still remember having to make an emergency appointment with the doctor that day. You were going to name it 'Gumball'."

" _Mom._ "

"Not to mention last summer, when you and Riku got inside a couple of abandoned tires he'd found and the two of you tried racing down that giant hill at the park."

"Nothing even happened with that one! We only bounced down the side into the grass at the bottom."

"You're lucky you only bounced and didn't keep rolling into traffic. It's miraculous you didn't even get whiplash. Or oh, how about six months ago when you and Selphie—"

"Okay! Okay, jeez!" Sora interjected, huffing, "I've gotten in, uh, stuff before, yes, but this is different. If anything, we're going to be super cautious with this one. We'll be specifically preparing in case if anything goes wrong."

"'If'. That's the thing. With setting sail on a trip like this, there is no 'if' things will go wrong, they _will_ go wrong. And what will you do when things go wrong out in the middle of the ocean where it'll be too far away for anyone to help in time? Or too far away to be able to get in contact with anyone?"

Sora poked the fish on her plate with a fork and muttered, "Kairi asked the same thing."

"Sometimes Kairi's the only one of you three that takes any precaution." Her mother sighed. "Look. I know how this whole idea sounds to you guys. It sounds fun and exciting, you say it's going to be an adventure. But it'll stop being an adventure when you're stranded a hundred miles from civilization on a boat and you run out of supplies. Or if it rains, or there's a hurricane, or if your clothes get wet and you don't have anything dry to wear and it's cold."

"Mom, come on, you gotta give me a little more credit than that. I'll wear my swim shorts. Easy peasy." She floundered a little bit when the answer didn't appease her mother as she'd hoped, and instead made her only squint more. "As for weather, we can handle that! I'm sure there's already a solution to that somewhere, that's why we're going to research a lot before we go."

"Right. Swim shorts. Sure." Her mom shook her head. "Why can't you just do a road trip to one of the other islands? Ferry tickets aren't expensive, I'll be happy to drive you the rest of the way."

"Kairi actually kind of suggested a road trip instead too." Sora admitted, "And we, I mean, I love you and I love having you around, really, it's just…something like this, I want to see if we can do it ourselves. If we're capable." she added meekly.

Her mom made a hum at that, scooping up her finished plate and rinsing it off in the sink. Sora thought the sudden lull in the conversation was unbearable.

"Hey, you know what, it's a dumb idea anyways, it's okay." Sora twirled her fork over the rest of her dinner. "Just, uh, forget I said anything."

"No, no," Her mother said, turning back around. "I'm not going to forget the whole idea just yet. I'll think about it."

Sora looked up immediately. "Wait, are you saying yes?"

"I'm saying I'll think about it. I'm also saying the idea right now sounds ridiculously needlessly dangerous, but I'll think about it."

"…I love you mom."

At this, she snorted and smiled at Sora for the first time since the conversation started. "I love you too, sunbeam, but that alone won't make me say yes. Now go finish your homework."

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _3 Weeks until the fall of Destiny Islands_

Today started oddly.

In a surprising twist of events, Sora was actually prepared for once when Kairi came over for studying. She had already miraculously found her workbooks, which were missing for a week until then, and was doing the work problems in them by the time Kairi knocked on the door to her bedroom.

At Kairi's questioning look, Sora grinned and answered, "I'm about eighty percent sure my mom's going to agree to the adventure idea. I wanted to stay on her good side."

"Didn't you mention that she brought up the same problems with the idea as me? There's no way she's going to agree to it."

"I'm not so su-re!" Sora sing-songed as she turned back to her unfinished problems and picked up her bright green colored pencil. It seemed she hadn't found a regular pencil or chose not to use one. With Sora, it could be either. "She said 'I'll think about it', which always means yes."

"Or it could just mean she'll say no later on, never say never."

And so had the day begun. It passed in a blur of green colored pencil markings (as it turned out, Sora couldn't find any normal pencils anywhere and made do) and flash cards and wrong answers and right answers. Sora was unusually focused today, and it was Kairi for once that found herself staring off into space a couple of times. She wasn't even distracted by anything in particular, it just became easy at points for her to unwittingly tune everything out and think of nothing.

"-Ri...Kairi?"

She looked up.

"I was wondering if you could check my work on the third one here, since you already finished yours." Sora asked. "You okay?"

"I'm fine, here, let me see what you have," Kairi responded, and then handed the workbook back, pointing out, "Third one's right, first one's wrong. You're supposed to get negative two."

"I thought I was supposed to be the distracted one." She joked, "Thanks, Kai."

Kairi chuckled. "You're still the reigning champion, don't worry."

The rest of the day was somewhat uneventful, if you didn't count Sora losing the colored pencil she was using to work, and then the bright pink highlighter she tried using after that, and what seemed like half the rainbow of various writing utensils she cobbled together to use after that. Kairi merely shook her head at this, having learned well by then to not lend her any pens or pencils outside of class or she'd never see them again. But it was in this way that the day passed on, with frustrations so small they seemed more funny than irritating, welcome reprieves in the face of tedium.

And as night fell and dinnertime commenced and finished, it was time for Kairi to go home. Sora had already bid her goodbye and gone off to get ready for bed, and as Kairi adjusted her bag over her shoulder and made her way out the door, Mina called after her.

"Hey," She said, and Kairi turned around. "I just wanted to say thanks again, for helping her with schoolwork. I'm glad she's got a friend like you."

"It's been no trouble at all, really," Kairi responded, to which Mina gave her a somewhat sardonic look.

"Trust me, I know my daughter." She chuckled. "If she's anything like her father and I, it's been at the very least _some_ trouble."

"I, well—" Kairi started, a little caught off guard by Mina's frankness. But any further protesting on her part went quiet when Mina went back inside for a moment with the door left ajar, as Kairi stood on the porch.

"Here, take this." She walked back outside and extended her hand towards Kairi, who held hers out. Kairi gave a surprised look when forty munny fell into her open palms. "It's a lot for me to ask of you to help out when you've no doubt got studying to do on your own. Even if you're in all the same classes."

Kairi shrugged. "I've been studying along with her. Seriously, it's fine."

"Well, I'm still going to pay you for your efforts. And don't protest!" She held up a finger as Kairi opened her mouth to do exactly that. "If you don't take it outright then I'll just get Sora to sneak it into your bag or something. It's only right. But apart from that, I wanted to ask you about something else."

At this Mina turned and made sure the door was shut behind them, muttering to her, "She's been on perfect behavior all week and doing all sorts of chores unprompted, there is no way Sora doesn't have an idea."

Kairi connected the dots: Sora mentioning her mother said she'll 'think about it', Mina wanting to ask her about something…

"I was thinking of agreeing to the raft idea."

"Really?"

Mina nodded, "My reasoning was that it's important for her to learn to be independent. Because one day, well, one day I won't be here. And when that happens, I want her to know how to go on without me."

It didn't take long for Kairi to figure out what Mina was referring to this time, either. "You're thinking about her dad."

Mina nodded again. "I've thought about it from time to time ever since Touma died. Especially every time I get in a car." She gave a ragged sigh before going on, "Everybody dies one day. Everybody. We all like to think that we're going to go at an old age surrounded by our loved ones at home, but," Her breath seemed to catch for a moment, and Mina blinked a couple of times before continuing. "Sometimes it doesn't work out like that. Pretty often it doesn't work out like that, really. And it's one of the hardest things to accept. So in case one day the worst happens to me, going along with the raft idea is my way of accepting it. But I kind of wanted to ask for your help with it."

"Yeah, anything."

Kairi never really gets to have many human conversations. That is, deeper conversations like this where you talk about the hard things: Life, death, and everything in between and beyond. It's part of the reason why she's been best friends with Riku and Sora since that first day she woke up on the islands, because it felt like nobody else was willing or able to discuss such matters. Save for Mina, all the adults in Kairi's life seemed to have uniformly decided to leave her out of those conversations, and it's felt belittling. So to be able to have a deep conversation with an adult who didn't think of her as unable to understand yet and treated her as an equal was refreshing.

"You're sweet." Mina gave her a kind look and took a deep breath. "I was hoping you could kind of, ah, commandeer the plan. Sort of. In particular make it so that the three of you set sail, but only go to one of the outlying islands. I've already done the research, and I figure they'd land over at Bikanel if they left from the north side of the play island during good weather, since they'd catch the tide stream from there. They'd either end up at Bikanel or Zanarkand at the farthest. That way all of you would have a predictable destination, you all would get a chance to figure things out on your own for independence, and the worst I'd have to worry about is the three of you getting a sunburn from being out for a few days if you don't reapply sunscreen. I'll be there to pick you guys up at the end, or you can give me a call any time. Though it might be best if they don't suspect anything, to get the full experience."

Mina shrugged. "But it doesn't matter. If you're able to convince them to do it that way, you should be perfectly safe. But all of this is _only if you want to_. Please don't be afraid to refuse, I know this is a lot to ask."

Kairi took a moment to think about it, turning the idea over in her head. It was a lot to ask, no doubt. She could say no and go home and think no more on the matter if she wanted to. But then, what of Sora and Riku? If this went anything like their other schemes, the two of them would just go on and do it anyways regardless of what was decided, if they wanted to go on an adventure badly enough. And that would invite a whole other slew of problems of its own even if they accounted for all possibility of error.

It was how the three of them worked, as a group. Riku and Sora could both be overly idealistic at times, though Sora was no doubt the blind optimist, with Riku thankfully having gone a little more realistic as they've gotten older. But those two alone were still prone to flights of fancy from time to time, and that's where Kairi came in. She could bring them back down to earth, remind them of how things would realistically go, and that was how they stayed safe. And when reminding them in frank terms didn't work, Kairi wasn't afraid of guile.

This way would be much safer and more predictable, with an easy out if things were to go wrong. And to boot, she thought to herself, it would be _fantastic_ to see the looks on their faces if they ever figured it out down the road. So all of that, plus the incentive of an adventure? It was no question.

"I think I'll do it. It sounds fun and it's what I was preferring in the first place, to just go to another island instead. I'll figure out a way to convince them, I promise."

Mina looked at Kairi like she was her savior. "Thank you! Thank you so much, otherwise I was just going to tell Sora no outright, and then I'd be worried—"

"Worried her and Riku would go off and find a way to sail anyways? Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It would be just like them." At this, the two shared exasperated smiles. "I'll keep them in line, Mina. Don't worry."

With that, the conversation was ended with a hastened goodbye as Kairi made her way back to her house a couple blocks over.

Along the way home, she mulled it over.

 _Everybody dies someday,_ Mina had said. _Everybody._ And more often than not you don't get to choose when or how.

Kairi paused when her house was within sight. She looked up at the first stars of the evening, past the light of street lamps flickering on one by one.

Riku asked why she wasn't interested in going to find her birthplace. The truth was that Kairi had always been a little curious about it, but at the same time she was scared of knowing more. She knew there would be little good to know about what had happened, why she had wound up here on the islands. Kairi already saw how that story ended; With her alone on a foreign shore, the only family she had being the family she made.

She loved her mom and dad she had now, but that didn't stop her from wondering about the family she left behind that she could hardly even remember beyond short flashes. Her real parents. Her grandmother. And she never stopped wondering why the smell of lilacs in the spring would make her Heart ache like an old familiar scar.

Kairi wondered how much her family prepared for whatever got them. Whether they were like Riku and they studied survival tools and how to make something to escape in. Whether they gathered all the knowledge they could to prepare for anything. Or did they surrender to it? Did they resign themselves to their fate, and only succeeded in getting Kairi out?

Maybe there were some things you could prepare for all you wanted, but in the end, life happened, and death ensued.

There was a legend on the islands that Kairi had heard not long after she first arrived from one of her foster parents when she was still in the program. When sailors went out to sea, they would take the thalassa shells from the islands' shores and sew five of them together end to end so they formed the shape of a star. Lucky charms, the sailors deemed the trinkets. Lucky stars that would help them make their way back home just like the constellations that they used to navigate.

There is a grey area in one's journey where preparation ends, and luck begins. Where you have your bags packed and you finally roll the dice and there's nothing you can do beyond that point. But what if there _was_ something you could do? Like have a good luck charm to help turn that roll of the dice in your favor? A wish upon a star that you could hold in your hand, to ebb the waves and turn the tides back home?

Kairi knew this trip would go predictably, they'd be going onto a route that cargo ships and ferries went along all the time. Even if it went unpredictably they wouldn't be stranded. It wouldn't be a day before another boat came across them. But at some point preparation ended, and predictions could only go so far. And for that, she thought to herself, it would help to have a lucky star to help you find your way.

Kairi started walking again towards her house, the reverie ended. In her room there was a jar of shells in her crafts drawer that had been gathering dust. If she remembered correctly, there were some thalassa shells among them.

She wondered where she had put the twine. She had work to do.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _3 Weeks until the fall of Destiny Islands_

"Considering you were the person who told us to, and I quote, 'Get our butts over to the play island right now,' it's a little ironic that you're the last one here." Riku drawled once Sora was within hearing distance.

"She didn't put it so eloquently, you forgot to add in the absurd number of exclamation marks and smiley faces." Kairi joked back, her smirk widening as Sora pouted at them both.

After dragging her boat ashore enough that the waves wouldn't carry it off, Sora turned back to them. "Very funny, you guys. Did you forget about the part where I said my mom agreed to the trip? I thought you'd be more excited about that."

"I _am_ excited about it." Riku replied, "Almost as excited as I am about the prospect of being captain."

"What! Why would you be captain right off the bat? We should at least decide it fair and square." Sora shook her head, "Kairi, are you coming on the trip? You didn't say anything about if you were or not in the messages."

"She wasn't hot on the idea when I first suggested it, remember?" At this, Riku turned to Kairi. "If you still don't want to, it's fine. Don't let her goad you into it." He teased Sora, who scowled at him.

"I don't _goad_ anyone into anything! I just ask very nicely."

"Right. And puppy dog eyes aren't considered a weapon of mass persuasion." He deadpanned.

"I just don't wanna go without Kairi! She's the whole reason we're doing this in the first place!" At this, she turned to Kairi. "Please? Pretty please? It would mean everything if you came with us!"

Time for Plan A. Or, what you might call 'being upfront'.

She pursed her lips. "Are you guys sure you don't want to just sail to one of the neighboring islands?"

"Yep." They both chimed.

"And there's nothing I can do or say to change your minds?"

"Nope." They said, again in tandem. It was weird how in sync they were, she mused to herself.

"Not even when I mention how ridiculously dangerous this could be?"

"Not even that." Riku said, him and Sora even looking _excited_ at the prospect of a perilous voyage.

Well, there went Plan A. _Adrenaline junkies, I swear,_ Kairi thought.

"Are you _sure_?" She teased, laughing out loud at Sora heaving a sigh to her response.

"Just come with us! Please?"

Time for Plan B. Which, considering how unlikely it would be for the two to pull a heel-face turn and decide to try a small trip instead, Plan B may as well have been Plan A all along.

When her dad was running for reelection four years ago, Kairi had sat in on some of his coaching for debates. For him, who had successfully remained incumbent since Kairi had first lived with them, the lessons were merely refreshing what he already knew. Practice. But for her, everything was new, and it all seemed so fascinating. It was crazy how much of communicating was really just about putting on a show. Place emphasis on this word and not that, but don't emphasize it this way, emphasize it like that. Make sure your tone is confident and authoritative, but kind, because you're running for Mayor and not President. Project your voice and enunciate, and triple-check everything you say beforehand for any way your opponent can use it against you and plan for that.

But one of the most useful things she had learned was that giving just a couple seconds of pause before she gave an answer could work in a variety of ways: It could show your answer is one carefully thought of, yet off-the-cuff, which would be useful when you were on stage with an audience that would determine whether you had a job tomorrow. Or in cases like now, when you were trying to angle for a specific outcome, giving a moment of pause before giving someone an answer that they wanted helped keep the victory from seeming too easy to them, that your agreement was perhaps conditional, and they'd be more inclined to agree to what you asked. Such as calling the shots of the trip.

The ball was in Kairi's court now. Time to fulfill that promise.

"Fine." She bit back a laugh when they both let out a whoop. "But! Only if I get to be captain."

"What? I wanted to be captain, it was my idea in the first place!"

"I should be captain!" Sora protested to Riku, who gave her a bewildered gesture.

"Why would you be captain?" He asked.

"Because I want to be!"

Kairi raised a hand. "I call dibs on captain because we're going to find my birthplace, right? How about this: You guys can figure out which of you will be captain for the inevitable journeys we'll all go on thereafter if this one goes well."

There it is. A reasonable explanation for why she should lead, and the prospect that they would go on more journeys after this one, which would work for Riku, _and_ the reminder they'd be able to lead later on with the implication that she'd go along, which roped in Sora. She could tell it was starting to work from the thoughtful looks on both of their faces.

Perhaps she could throw in something to sweeten the pot. "And a captain needs a first mate, right? Someone's gotta come up with a name for it."

They both grinned.

"Deal." Sora chirped. "I wanna name it Excalibur."

"Deal." Riku agreed, "If we name it after something other than a sword."

"Boo!" She jeered, "It's the best name, come on!"

"How about you guys settle it the old-fashioned way? A spar?" Kairi interrupted, already feeling a headache coming on from the impending squabbling.

And so they did. It turns out, Sora was late that day because it took a while to find the old wooden swords her and Riku would duel with all the time, which had only gotten lost in the first place from lack of use since he hadn't come over hardly at all for a while until very recently, and they got the chance to duel even less. Or so it was told by Sora, who had disclosed such with a smile that managed to be half-sneaky, half-bashful, and Kairi knew immediately that she'd found and brought the swords today in the hopes of a match against him.

Kairi sat in her familiar spot on the sidelines; She'd never much cared for playfighting like so many of the other kids, instead fascinated with the art of politics that her dad worked in. Fighting, and winning, using only words just felt more satisfying than using a weapon. Well, that, and Kairi never felt comfortable with the idea of using a weapon on anybody in the first place. She was a bit of a pacifist.

She watched the two fall right back into that familiar dance, dodging and striking and dodging again, and it was like they picked right up where they left off months ago when they last dueled. Kairi had developed something of a trained eye for their fights in particular, having watched them so many times, and she could see the openings in their forms and tell by the movements what they were planning next.

And right now, if she wasn't mistaken, Riku's fighting seemed the tiniest bit off. He was going just the tiniest bit slower with dodging and striking than he did with other fights she'd watched, sometimes outright glazing past openings in Sora's form that could be exploited.

This was different. Riku was no slouch, Kairi knew that for sure. With his fights with the other kids, he was always the winner, his speed and quick reflexes outclassing Wakka or Tidus, and maneuverability helped him stay out of Selphie's reach. And more often than not with Sora in the past, he would win. So why was he slower now? And why didn't he go for the opportunities to strike?

Was he letting Sora win?

* * *

 **SORA**

 _2 Days until the fall of Destiny Islands_

School was out, classes and exams were passed with flying colors (a few colors short of a rainbow, but a couple of B's were fine by Sora _thankyouverymuch_ ), and summer vacation had officially begun as of five days ago.

Not that Sora was counting, of course. In her opinion counting was reserved solely for counting _down_ the days to the end of school, no sense in counting how many days of vacation you'd used if you had three whole months of it. That'd just get in the way of that glorious feeling where you weren't really sure what day it was and it didn't matter, because the words yesterday and tomorrow may as well have not meant anything compared to the magnificent word _Today._

Well, not quite. The word tomorrow did mean something to her right now, at least in relation to the-day-after-day-after tomorrow, formally referred to as The Day They'll Set Sail.

Up to now, the trio had only been able to work on it on the weekends, which had hampered their speed in finishing construction of the raft and getting together the things they'd need for the journey itself. So far, they had only been able to get together materials to make the raft itself and round up stuff like provisions to help them survive the journey to Kairi's birthplace. Which was still a bit of an achievement, in Sora's opinion, considering they were three kids who were busy trying not to fail the school year and scrounge together what free lumber and sailcloth they could, on top of all the survival stuff Riku looked up for when they'd sail on the open sea.

Speaking of Riku, he was hanging out with them all the time again! And dueling way more often too, when Sora could convince him that they'd already done a ton of work that day and deserved a break from the whole raft thing, which admittedly wasn't super often. He was ridiculously driven in finishing it. But sometimes she could convince him and was able to assess how their skills had either withered or gotten better. So far Riku seemed to have only gotten better, which was totally unfair, _but_ she did seem to be winning more often than she used to.

Sora wondered why Riku avoided them in the first place, but she never really bothered to ask. There were still a few weird spots sometimes with her and him, like if she ever mentioned stuff she and her mom did and he'd get a little quiet about that, and she figured it was some emotional baggage he wasn't ready to talk about yet. Riku was kind of like that a lot lately. So Sora just let it go and things carried on as usual, and it felt like old times again.

Like she said: Yesterday didn't matter. Only today mattered, and the day-after-day-after tomorrow.

And today, Sora had quite a bit to do. She'd already helped Riku rig together the raft hull and the mast, package up the nonperishable provisions, and right now she was supposed to be searching for the ream of sailcloth Kairi was working on sewing into a proper sail (Sora had tried to help but her seams looked like the march of tipsy ants, thankfully Kairi was able to handle that part) and pick up any thalassa shells she saw along the way.

Two out of three were done, and she'd been doing a lot over the past few days with working on setting sail, so Sora figured she'd be fine with a quick nap with the sun still so early in the sky. She hadn't been able to sleep too well last night, her usual dreams of that key-shaped sword getting more and more intense recently, and were capped off with a nightmare the night before of a creepy looking ship that wasn't quite a ship. Whatever it was, it had a really spooky face on the end of it, and at the top was this dude that seemed to be fused to it, attacking her and her friends. It was the scariest dream she'd had yet.

She'd mentioned the dreams to Kairi a couple of times in the past few weeks, though that was mostly reserved for the most outlandish or coolest. Like how one time she was going along the ocean floor, although it was really hard to swim like she normally did, like her legs were restricted or something. Or the other time when she was walking around in a room piled to the ceiling with treasure.

And in every single dream, she would be holding that giant key, clutching to it as a lifeline, wielding it as a weapon. And in every single dream, the living shadows at the corners of her vision would grow closer and closer, until Sora could feel an odd chill crawl towards her heart. The dreams feel so _vivid_ , like they really happened, and she had told Kairi as such one day when they were both going home on Sora's boat.

" _I've been having more of the weird dreams lately, every time I fall asleep. They're not like the stuff I'd dream about before they started, where you can tell it was a dream when you wake up. It feels…It feels like it really happened. Like I'm remembering it, but so many of the details about what's going on disappear when I wake up and the only thing I know for sure is that it happened. But it's impossible. I_ know _it didn't happen, none of it did." Sora's rowing slowed as her face skewed with confusion. "But I can't help but wonder, like is any of this for real, or not?"_

 _For a moment, neither of them spoke. It was Kairi that talked first._

" _Well, you said they were just dreams, right?"_

" _Yeah."_

" _Then they probably can't be real. But," She paused and made a contemplative expression. "It doesn't mean they might never be real. Maybe they'll be real one day, but not yet. Maybe they're from adventures we'll have after this one, or along the way." She grinned._

(And Kairi doesn't know how prophetic her words are, doesn't know anything about the Dark that creeps towards the worlds, towards her and her friends, towards the Door. All she knows of the Dark is what she sees in others' Hearts and the remnants of terror she remembers of its devastation, what little seeps through the wall raised by trauma: The smell of thunderstorms and machinery, the rumble of gnarled footsteps. And beneath it all, a twinkle of Light from the promised passage that will keep her safe for as long as it can.)

(All Kairi knows is that she is jesting and helping to build a way to a return to her home on the islands, not her home that used to twinkle with the rest of the sky.)

As she feels herself begin to drift off, she wonders what she might encounter this time. A new place to go to, a new enemy to fight with that key. New people to meet along the way.

But as the dream begins there is no key in her hands, nor unseen friends fighting by her side. All she knows is that she's sinking through water, watching the folding of waves above make the dimmed gleam of the sun form honeycomb patterns on her arms. She breathes out, and bubbles escape towards the distant surface. She breathes in.

She's falling, and falling, and then she opens her eyes again. There is no whimsical landscape in this dream. Sora's back on the shore of the play island, like she never fell asleep, but she realizes something's off.

It's quiet. There are no distant shouts of the other kids playing, or even the chirrups of birds or insects. Just the lapping of waves.

And Riku.

He's not looking at her, but at the horizon where the sea meets the sky. The horizon which is peculiarly devoid of the usual sight of the main island. She reaches out to him, first to try playing a prank, but then to try and save him, as half-formed ideas of jokes to pull are quelled by the panic of the tide receding far too much towards the tsunami cresting over both of them.

He turns to her, then. And on the face she knows like the back of her hand is a smile she doesn't recognize.

They reach for each other. And as the riptide catches her, as Riku's outstretched hand becomes blurrier and blurrier, all she can think of is how he doesn't even seem to be afraid.

She falls, again, and opens her eyes to find herself back on the same shore, again. But this time it's Kairi who's there. And in the twilit sky, the firelight of the setting sun is framed by falling stars.

Sora looks down to clutch onto her crown pendant and realizes she's already doing so. But the gesture doesn't stifle the bone-deep fear she feels at seeing the meteor shower and the echoes of a half-forgotten promise. And then, she looks up, closer. There's a dark shape amongst the meteors that's hurling towards the water. It's _Sora._

She blinks, and she's falling yet again. This time, Sora's in the shoes of her doppelganger in the sky. She looks over towards Kairi and her other self on the shore, and even though Sora's too far away to see them clearly, she can feel it when she and her other self link gazes. She clenches up to prepare herself for hitting the ocean.

At the height she was at, falling into the ocean would have been a death sentence. At that height the liquid acts more as a solid, just like you're hitting a brick wall, and it's just as lethal. But she waits and waits, and the impact never comes.

Sora opens her eyes one more time. She's floating down onto something now, a hard surface, but everything is dark.

She feels a stirring under her foot like the ground is alive, and as Sora moves her leg she is blinded for a moment by a brightness that only grows brighter, and she looks around to see the black cloak that covered everything carried away piece by piece on the backs of birds.

She looks down, and her eyes adjust to see that what she is standing on is a platform of stained glass shining merrily against the void. The birds have vanished, their wingbeats not even echoing anymore, and it is silent.

This time, there is nobody else in the dream to reach for—Kairi and Riku are gone.

Sora can't shake the feeling that she's been here before.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _2 Days before the fall of Destiny Islands_

Kairi thinks she may be coming down with a head cold, but she's not sure. It doesn't seem like the time of year for it, anyway.

She completely lost her ability to focus. That's the main symptom. Well, that and this weird tension that's settled into her bones. And everything's felt _weird_ lately, too, like a weight at the edge of her senses, but she thinks that may just be her.

Maybe she was just going crazy. Or maybe it was just stress from exams. But Kairi kept getting this overwhelming sense of déjà vu that she couldn't figure out.

Kairi cursed under her breath as she had to retie a knot for the mast for the third time. Riku looked up from where he was settling the logs together before bonding them with resin.

"Having trouble?"

"Yeah," Kairi remade the first couple of loops in the masthead knot before continuing, "I'm usually good with stuff like this. I don't know, I'm probably just off my game today."

Riku shrugged. "Maybe you're still stressed out from school." And then he laughed a little, saying, "I know I am. I nearly had a heart attack this morning because I was sure I was missing class, I completely forgot it's summer break."

"I know I've done that before," Kairi chuckled, but her mind was elsewhere. She wasn't convinced it was just stress, usually she could do this in her sleep. In summer camp back in elementary school, she was the braiding champ for three years straight. Kairi could do braids, ship knots, crafts of all kinds. Only Selphie could come close.

Kairi ignored the shiver that ran down her spine. She finished the knot and began the next one.

Riku angled his head around Kairi and peered over her shoulder and said, "Looks like Sora's off her game today, too."

She turned to see Sora napping on the shore. It was a familiar sight.

Kairi rolled her eyes with a smile. And she said in a melodramatic tone, "What _ever_ shall I do with her? Napping in class, napping at home, napping here…"

Riku gave a snort. "Being able to sleep anywhere at any time has got to be considered some sort of a superpower. Here, I'll go wake her up." And before he could move, she gestured for him to stay.

"Wait, I got an idea."

With a sneaky grin, Kairi tiptoed over to where Sora lay. Not that she needed to, since the sand muffled her footsteps anyways, but Kairi figured she should put on a show. And once she reached Sora, Kairi hovered over her and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

She waited so long that eventually Riku hollered from his spot near the raft, "I don't think your plan's working."

Kairi hollered back "It always works eventually! Be patient!"

And of course, Sora didn't wake up with the racket. She seemed to be too busy squirming and seeming to struggle against something in her sleep a little bit. But Sora's usually able to feel when someone's watching her, and it's how Kairi's woken her up dozens of times, and at last it works now. The girl opened her eyes blearily, still half-asleep, before seeing Kairi looming over her. Startled, Sora hurriedly sat up, nearly accidentally hitting her forehead against Kairi's but managed to dodge.

Sora spun around to see Kairi laughing at her reaction and groaned. "Why do you keep waking me up like that?"

"Why do you keep napping like that?" Kairi teased.

Sora had no response for the quick retort. Kairi eyed her for a moment, noticing the slightly dark circles under her eyes.

"Bad dream?" And when Sora gave her a look like ' _How did you know?'_ Kairi explained, "I saw you struggling in your sleep."

Sora looked down at her hands for a moment, turning them over. "I'm not sure it was a dream. Or maybe it was? I don't know, some huge black thing just swallowed me up and there was all this stained glass, and some voice, and, and," Sora gesticulated futilely, and didn't bother to finish her train of thought. "Saying it out loud sounds crazy. Maybe it was just a dream."

Kairi straightened up to start walking back. "Come on back then, ya bum. We've got a raft to finish."

"Wait, hey Kairi?"

She turned back to Sora with a brow raised in question.

"You said you don't remember anything of your past before coming here, right? Other than that story?"

"Right?" Kairi responded, wondering where Sora was going with this.

"What if, when we set sail, we find it? Where you come from?"

"Then it'd be nice to see it."

"And…what if we never find it?"

Kairi shrugged. "Then I wouldn't mind not seeing it."

"Really?" Sora gave her a baffled look, "Haven't you ever wondered what it was like?"

 _Only all the time,_ she thought to herself, but Kairi instead replied, "Sometimes. But I'm not worried. My home is here on the islands with you guys. I'm happy here."

And that last part is the truth. Because as much as she wonders, she really is happier here. What little flashes she's had of the time before had rarely seemed happy, maybe because she was too young to remember the good times or maybe because there weren't much of any good times, so she'd long since figured that she was put here for a good reason. The thought has certainly helped stifle the feelings of abandonment that would crop up from time to time.

"I've just always been curious about it." Sora says, "And about what Riku mentioned a while back too, about the people on the islands having to have come from somewhere else. I wonder if we all came from other worlds—"

"Kairi, I told you to wake her up, not for you to get distracted too!"

Both of them looked over to see Riku giving them an unimpressed look.

Kairi held up a hand to half-hide her grin. "Oops."

"What! I was so not distracted!" Sora defended, scrambling to her feet.

He deadpanned, "Didn't you just wake up from a nap?"

"It was not a nap! It was, uhm," Sora paused as she undoubtedly tried to come up with a good cover, "It was an _interlude_. That's it. An interlude. Yup."

Well then. She really _had_ been paying attention during their studying after all.

Riku rolled his eyes at her. "I guess that's the five-dollar word of the day. Come on, let's get back to work."

Sora got up, but sluggishly, and Kairi could tell her steps were still mired in thought. Must've been some dream. And now that she looked, it seemed Riku was a little bit downcast today too. His Light was much steadier than it'd been in past months, true, but it was still flickering worryingly.

Kairi brightened as she got an idea. "Hey, how about the usual race, but this round we call it keeps? The winner names the raft."

 _That did the trick_ , she thinks to herself, watching Riku and Sora make a mad dash back towards the far side of the island. Everything was back to normal again. Kairi ran after them, but she was left in the dust. Back to normal again, indeed.

But she didn't mind it. Wherever they went, Kairi always caught up to them eventually.

* * *

 **RIKU**

2 Days before the fall of Destiny Island

The score was now 11 to 10, him against Sora. The raft had officially been named _Highwind._

He wouldn't dare confess it aloud, not when Sora had called him on it, but Riku maybe did cheat. Just a tiny bit.

To be precise, he was supposed to find time to help out Wakka with fixing those scaffold platforms on the far side of the play island that they'd built a while back for some obstacle course that never came to fruition, because there was one part that had been a little weaker than the rest. Yet between school and the raft there never really was much time recently, so it'd been forgotten.

And if it turned out to give him a head start…Well. Riku wasn't one to turn down good fortune. It wasn't as if Sora got hurt on it anyways, just a little startled before she recovered skillfully (he swore it was like she was part monkey or something) but it gave him just enough time to win.

And it gave him enough time to make sure the raft wasn't named after a sword. Sora could make fun of the name _Pequod_ all she wanted (and if he had to confess to another thing, that name _was_ a little lame) but at least it'd make more sense for the raft to be named after a fictional boat instead of a fictional sword.

Speaking of the raft, there was still a bit left to do to make sure it was ready. Riku was already halfway towards it when he heard shouting from behind him.

It was Sora. "Riku! Hey, wait up!"

"Yeah? What's up?" He said and watched how her expression was almost getting hesitant. Hmm.

"So, before Kairi woke me up, I had a really weird dream." Sora shuffled her feet, kicking around small clouds of sand. "I kinda wanted to ask you about it, 'cuz I thought you maybe had the same sort of dream before, and you were in it anyways, so it made sense to me to say something."

Riku turned pink. Then he turned red.

And the most eloquent response he could muster was an "Uhh…"

And he knew Sora could tell in an instant what he thought she meant because she turned pink too.

"I—Wha—Oh my god! _Riku! Not that type of weird dream!"_

"I-If you run up to me out of nowhere talking about having a 'weird dream', I'm going to draw certain conclusions!" He stammered out in defense.

" _It wasn't that type of—!_ Riku, I _meant_ weird dreams like _how you used to dream of the door!_ " Sora stomped her foot in frustration and walked off with a huff, telling him "Just forget it, never mind."

Oh. _Oh._ Okay, that made a little more sense.

His curiosity got the better of him and he gave a short jog to catch up to her, falling into lock-step beside Sora.

"Alright, alright, fine. So, it was a weird dream, but it wasn't _that_ sort of weird dream. I'm listening, what was it about? Was anyone else in it?"

She glanced at him before answering, in the way that she did when she was making sure he was being serious.

"Kairi was in it too, or I'm pretty sure she was. It was in the very beginning of the dream, which was a blur." At his acknowledging nod, Sora continued, "You…you were only in it for a moment, before you were caught in a tidal wave, I think? I remember trying to reach you, but we were both caught up in it. I remember looking up to the sky at one point and seeing myself falling, and then the next instant, _I_ was the one falling and watching myself watch me. Like I said, weird."

"O-kay," He stretched out the syllables, mulling over what she said. "So was that all?"

She shook her head. "I definitely remember landing in this place, all dark except a stained-glass window, but the fancy window was the floor. It was really pretty. Some of the designs were people, but I couldn't recognize who they were. I was walking around, and these weird creatures kept popping up that I had to fight off, and there was this weird voice throughout telling me what to do."

"What did it say?"

"It was just speaking vaguely. Telling me that there's so much to do, but then it told me to not hurry? I didn't really get that part, but it did give me a cool weird sword, so it wasn't that bad. I just kind of kept going from platform to platform, all of them made out of stained glass, fighting more of those creatures. And then it told me to go through this ornate wooden door and I found myself back on the play island from there."

"That really is weird."

"Yeah. Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie were all there when I walked in. At this point the voice was saying I'd have to fight, and something about keeping my 'Light' strong? I didn't really understand that. I thought it meant I was supposed to fight Tidus and them right there when the voice said that there were times I'd have to fight, but all they did was just ask me questions instead."

"Yeah? What did they ask?"

"Weird stuff. They kept asking me these questions that were, what was it…Meh-ta-fizz-eh-cal?"

"Metaphysical," Riku nodded.

"Yes! Metaphysical questions like what was I afraid of? What do I want out of life? I hadn't really considered any of these things before then so it was kind of hard to answer."

She continued, "And then it said 'Understand that the closer you get to Light, the greater your shadow becomes. But don't be afraid—you hold the mightiest weapon of all.' Which I thought was a little silly, cuz the whole dream at this point was getting super surreal and I couldn't help _but_ be a little scared, with the questions and those creatures and the voice and everything. That, and it was a little silly for it to tell me a weird sword was the mightiest weapon because, well, duh, it's a sword!"

Riku knew they were both thinking of the endless spars over the years with their wooden swords at this, and they high-fived. He tried to ignore the rushing feeling in his chest, but Riku could feel the grin spread across his face regardless. But then he thought of something.

"What did you mean when you thought I had the same sort of dream before? I don't remember ever dreaming anything about disembodied voices or existential questions."

He could see her squirming quite a bit at this, more than the beginning of the conversation.

"Well, the voice…it kept mentioning a door." As she said that his eyes flickered to the thicket of ferns and palms that marked the entrance to the cave, at the end of which the strange door stood. As they glanced back to each other he knew they both were thinking of his dreams of that door opening onto countless worlds. "But I'm sure it didn't mean that door in particular, right? There's like a million doors on Destiny Islands at least, and who knows if it meant a door we haven't found yet, or—"

"Hey, hey, don't worry about it." He reassured her. "It's just a dream, right? Maybe it means nothing, or maybe it meant something, but in the end it's just a dream."

"Just a dream," Sora echoed.

"Just a dream. What did the voice say about a door anyways, if it got you so worked up?"

At this point, she stopped walking. He turned to her, having taken a step before realizing she had frozen up, and looked to Sora with an inquiring expression.

The look on her face was pondering yet almost fearful as she glanced back to the entrance to the cave.

Her next words made him freeze in place as well.

"At the end, right before I woke up, it told me ' _You are the one who will open the door.'"_

* * *

 **SORA**

 _6 Hours until the fall of Destiny Islands_

The raft was done. The sail was finished, the resin sealing the logs had completely dried and cured, the holding bins for supplies were waterproofed and stuffed to the brim. Not a detail was out of place.

So why was she still having to run around gathering supplies?

Well, okay, Sora knew _why_ she had to find fresh provisions to bring along: The MRE's donated to their project by Zell's grandfather from his military career tasted like a dusty fart. They could survive on the things, true, but none of the trio were pleased at the idea of having to do so. So along with canned foods and whatever other nonperishable goods the kids could rustle up, Sora was left with the responsibility of the aforementioned fresh provisions.

Which then entailed the unenviable task of prying the resident seagull of the play island from her egg.

" _Not it." Riku spoke first, his arms crossed as they all looked up to the top of the palm tree. The seagull circled above much like a bird of prey, her beady eyes fixed on the trio clustered around where her nest sat._

" _Ditto," Kairi agreed. She chewed her lip at the sight of the bird circling closer._

" _Oh, come_ on, _you guys!" Sora protested and looked to each of them. "No help? At all?"_

" _Not from me." Kairi answered._

" _Riku?"_

" _Nope."_

 _She visibly deflated. Sora glanced up at the nest again. The seagull had taken to glaring straight at her, and Sora could swear she had the look of murder on her beaked face._

 _She decided to try Riku again. "I forgot how to climb these trees compared to the ones with branches on the main island." Sora coiled one tuft of her unruly cinnamon-brown hair around her finger. "Show me?"_

 _He scoffed. "No way. I am_ not _falling for that trick again."_

 _Her charming expression dropped into a deadpan scowl. Kairi snickered from beside her._

" _Fine." Sora relented, and tucked her wooden sword into the chain at her belt. She had to ready for battle, after all. And then, at the menacing caw of the seagull from above, Sora began to climb._

Several claw marks, a hard-won fight, and an attempted tarring-and-feathering later (the seagull didn't have tar, but it made do with a few carefully aimed splatters of excrement instead) and Sora had procured one seagull egg as her spoils of war.

Which she then promptly left with Riku as revenge.

"Here, catch!" Sora called out to him in a dead run, the bird still in pursuit and swiping at whatever part of the girl she could reach. In one swoop she tossed the egg to Riku, who managed to catch it without breaking it and took a moment to look at the egg and process what exactly had just happened. Which the seagull took as opportunity to ambush him.

"Hey-! Hey!" He called after her, trying to dodge the seagull and not break the egg at the same time. Sora only laughed in response and heard his shouts echo into the distance as she made her getaway. "This stupid bird better stop—Ow!"

She only stopped running when she couldn't hear either of them anymore and took a moment to wash off the remaining feathers and seagull excrement in the ocean. Sora was scrubbing at one particularly steadfast spot on her sleeve when she heard a voice from above.

It was Selphie. "You're gonna need soap to scrub that out all the way. Irvine got smacked with it last week while trying to chat up some girl, and he said it took multiple washings to get the stain out."

"I think I almost got it." Sora threw her a smirk. "It hasn't dried. It'd still be totally worth it even if it did, though, I got payback on Riku for cheating in our race yesterday and for leaving me with the seagull. But he probably tossed it to Kairi or somewhere else as soon as possible."

"Oh yeah. You're helping Riku and Kairi out with something, right? That boat thing?"

"The raft!" Sora replied, "We're gonna set sail tomorrow to try and find Kairi's birthplace. I hope we'll find a real adventure out of it. Today Kairi enlisted me to find some fresh supplies for food on top of what we got."

"So _that's_ why you got the egg!" Selphie exclaimed, "I thought you were just doing that for a joke."

She laughed. "Nah, Kai gave me a whole list of stuff to find. Next up is mushrooms, but I don't have any idea of where to get them."

"They're usually in dark places," Selphie replied. "Wet, too. Try the crevices near the waterfall and in the cave."

"You're right!" Sora readied to run off. "Thanks, Selph!"

"Thank me by bringing back a souvenir from your trip!" She yelled after her.

Sora raced along the walkway and towards the underbrush that concealed the entrance to the cave, careful to keep an eye out as she ran for any relentless birds that might still be pursuing her.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the low light in the cavern. The temperature change was immediate. With the always-warm, and sometimes a little too hot, climate outside, the secret place was always cool in comparison with the air feeling a little damp. And the more she looked the more she saw, with the long rocky corridor of the cave punctuated with the occasional chalk drawing.

Sora walked down the corridor, stopping here and there along the way to pick whatever mushrooms she saw. The air got cooler as she got closer to the chamber at the end, but that was nothing new, and neither was the familiar rustle of the wind rushing against the hole at the ceiling of the chamber.

Upon reaching the wide room of the cave, Sora took a quick moment to look around at the clusters of drawings up and down every part of the walls she was tall enough to reach. She had never been an accomplished artist, but she'd gotten better with time and practice, and you could see it in the progression from the drawings at the very bottom of the walls towards the top. In the corner, a duck and a dog that she'd scrawled back when she first started getting the dreams of visiting different worlds. Another corner, and there was a more carefully done drawing of her and Riku as knights, protecting a castle whose architecture made no sense, but that didn't matter to her. And another corner…

There. Portraits of her and Kairi and Riku, done by themselves back when they were still little and Kairi was still a relative newcomer to the islands. It was a cherished memory.

Sora heard another rustle behind her, distinctly different from the sound of the wind at the ceiling. She straightened up quickly, stumbling, and spun around to see assembled at the door a dark shape that wasn't there when she came in.

"Wha—Who's there?"

The dark shape did not move. It was a person, presumably, hunched over and wearing a brown sack-like robe.

She could feel herself tense and go cold at the sight—whoever they were, they were menacing.

" _I've come to see the door to this world."_

He certainly didn't sound like anyone she knew. The voice was far too mature to be any one of the kids.

"Huh?"

" _This world is now connected: Its Heart beats in sync with all the others that have awoken. Tied to the Darkness…soon to be completely eclipsed."_

Was this some sort of a joke?

"Wh-What are you talking about?" She thought to what he said. _Heart? Connected?_

 _"But, child,"_

The figure finally turns to look at her, and in the low light of the cave all that was visible of his face was a dark chasm where his head should be. But even without seeing him properly, Sora got the distinct feeling he was amused at her.

 _"Don't you remember?"_

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _A little over 4 hours until the fall of Destiny Islands_

"I told you to poke the holes in the thin parts of the ridges on the shell, doing it on the thicker parts like that is why your shells keep breaking."

"I know," Selphie frustratedly huffed, "I'm _trying_ , it's just annoying—Stupid!" She blurted out as yet another Thalassa shell broke in her incomplete charm, before she resignedly tossed it to the pile of other broken shells the pair had spent in their efforts.

After the whirlwind of activity earlier from Sora stealing the seagull egg as part of her errands, as she tossed it to Riku, who then promptly left it with Kairi, who _then_ had to hide with it for a while in the bushes in hope that the seagull may give up (which it did, but not without giving one last baleful caw before flying out past the horizon) before she could properly store it on the raft, Kairi had settled down with trying to complete her own Thalassa shell charm. Which was, if she had to be honest, going rather poorly.

Something like this was easily finished in a fortnight if Kairi was feeling normal. But the problem was that she was _not_ feeling normal and hadn't for about a week now. Just like yesterday, it was like she had a head cold or something and unable to concentrate as well as she usually should.

Maybe she'd been hanging out with Sora so much that she was starting to turn into her, Kairi joked to herself, and tried to thread the shells together again so that the tiny crown-shaped bead in the middle was properly placed. And, again, it was improperly done, the bead falling right through the center and back onto the wooden boards of the pier. Kairi resisted the urge to curse.

At some point Selphie had seen what she was trying to make, cooed over it, and asked her to show her how to make one too, and now here they both were messing up.

Kairi had threaded three of the shells and was working to loop together more as she spotted a familiar face out of the corner of her vision. She turned to see Sora stumbling towards them, her forehead creased with an unusual look that seemed equal parts conflicted, bewildered, and unnerved. The look disappeared when she noticed Kairi saw her, and Sora gave her a toothy grin.

"Got the mushrooms you asked for." Sora spoke, holding them out to Kairi. A couple fell out of her hands as she did so, with more falling around still as she bent over to try and pick them up. "You said you wanted them in the stockpile?"

"Yeah, but don't worry about that now," Kairi assured her as she helped pick up the fallen mushrooms. "Are you okay? You looked a little…" She trailed off, but Sora understood what she meant.

"Yeah! Yeah, I'm fine, there was just a weird guy in the cave where I got some of these at and he spouted some stuff off, but he's gone now."

Selphie and Kairi shared a look at that.

"Weird? What kind of weird?" Selphie questioned, and Kairi followed.

"Was he being a creep?"

"What did he say to you?"

"Do you think he might still be on the play island?"

"No!" Sora spluttered, "No, no, nothing like that! Jeez, this feels like an interrogation. It was just some weird gloomy guy in a hood talking about how that door back there is connected now, or something. I don't know. He wasn't really making any sense."

"Huh. That's odd." Kairi remarked.

"Yeah."

Selphie joked, "Are you sure it wasn't Riku in a costume? He can be pretty gloomy, and he _has_ been mentioning that door a lot lately."

"Well, I mean," Sora's tone got a little defensive as she hesitated, and she kicked her toe against the boards of the pier. "The door thing, sure, but he's not really that bad, Riku's got a lot to be gloomy about."

"Like what?" Selphie asked sincerely, and Kairi could see Sora losing her verbal footing.

"I, uh, you know…like…stuff. A lot of stuff. I can't tell."

Sora, Riku, and Kairi knew everything about each other, or close to it, but they had an unspoken knowledge not to mention anything to anyone else. Some things you didn't need pinky promises to agree to. And Sora, in her momentary overzealousness, had skirted a line. Her standing up for Kairi and Riku was always admirable, but it could be a double-edged sword if she wasn't careful.

"Now you're being secretive!" Selphie pouted, and Kairi stepped in diplomatically.

"It was probably one of the older kids playing a prank, and it didn't mean anything. You know how they like to come by sometimes and do stuff like that to spook us."

Selphie relented at that. "That's true. It took me forever to get all that flour off after that stunt Zell pulled on me last week."

Sora guffawed. "He only did that 'cuz you got the last hot dog from the stand that day."

"Yeah, Selph," Kairi teased, "You don't get between Zell and those things, everyone knows that."

"I'll do whatever I want!" Selphie protested, but whatever fire there was in her rebuttal was drowned out by her overly large yawn. She scooped up the pieces of her charm with one hand and stood to stretch in the light of the sun just beginning to set. "It's starting to get late. I think I'll hitch a ride back with Tidus before my mom gets mad. You guys coming?"

They both shook their heads no.

"We're just doing some last-minute stuff for the raft, don't wait up on us."

Selphie gave a nod at that and bade them good luck as she left for the day. And then it was just Sora and Kairi seated alone on the pier, the mushrooms and the unfinished charm's components left in a pile behind them, forgotten.

She looked over at Sora, studying how her gaze was turned to the water, dismayed and fretful.

"You're thinking about him again, aren't you."

"Yeah." Sora drew little ripples in the water with her shoe. "Riku's just…been super _weird_ lately. One minute he's fine and everything's normal, the next he's pissy and brooding and I'm not really sure if it was something I did. The guy in the cave talking about the door reminded me of yesterday when I told him about that dream, the one I told you about later?" She looked to Kairi, who nodded. "Well, when I mentioned to Riku what the voice said about 'opening the door', he just got really icy all of a sudden. Today he's been great but there's still this weird feeling, you know what I mean? Even Tidus was picking up on it. He was asking me if me and Riku were still pals, saying it was getting really hard to tell."

Sora sighed and stopped kicking her feet, letting them dangle limply off the pier.

"I said we were, but honestly it's getting really hard for me to tell, too."

Kairi had no response for that and thought back to that first day when Riku came over to Sora's house with the idea for the raft. That first day, the Light she could see in his Heart when she looked beyond was encouraging for once. It was still dim, but less so, its glow tentatively hopeful. And over the past few weeks as the trio hung out more and more, until they were together nearly every day just as they once were, it had grown to twinkle a little more merrily.

But then, there was something else she noticed about it. The Light, however little there was in his Heart, however much it tried to stand out in the midst of all the Darkness that had lingered, it would falter at the drop of a hat. One moment, and it'd be so bright it almost seemed to be a normal amount in the Hearts she'd seen. The next moment, and it'd dim so much it was like watching a sputtering candle at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

Kairi couldn't really figure out a pattern for _why_ his Light was so volatile, it'd be caused by anything. Some perfectly innocent words by her or Sora or anyone, and it'd dim. Or nothing happened and maybe he'd be thinking for too long, and it'd dim just as much. There really wasn't any predictable pattern to it.

Two things were for certain though: One, he wasn't confiding in them as much as he'd used to, not in the way they'd all talk to each other in the past. So, Two, it couldn't really be Sora's fault, or Kairi's fault, if he wasn't communicating with them.

But _why_ did he stop communicating with them?

"He really has changed, hasn't he?"

"Yeah." Sora dejectedly agreed.

Instinct warned her against being careless with Darkness like that. Kairi may not have remembered much of her home, but she remembered enough to know better.

 _(A silver-haired man with two Hearts and a Darkness that reached out to encircle the world)_

"Hey, Sora?" Kairi faltered a little when she looked to her. "What if we just take the raft and go? Just the two of us?"

 _I don't want his Darkness to stain you. Or anyone. That Light is important, and I know you shouldn't ever lose it._

Sora did a double-take at that.

"And just leave him behind?"

"I was only joking, don't worry." Kairi responded, but she wasn't joking, not really, and she worried it might be noticeable. But thankfully, Sora seemed to roll with that, and chuckled with a shake of her head.

"Maybe you changed too, Kai." Sora joked, and Kairi grinned.

"Maybe you're right," She quipped, lazily bumping her foot against Sora's leg. And they both looked to the warm red light of the setting sun.

 _Don't ever change, Sora,_ Kairi thinks to herself. _Please, don't ever change._

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _50 Minutes until the fall of Destiny Islands_

It is night. Above, ill-boding black clouds swarm far above the rooftops of the islands, contrasting the announced predictions for clear weather that evening. And moving through the streets is a boy with silver hair, so sick with rage his senses tunnel to nearly nothing but what is right in front of him.

Riku does not know where he is going. He doesn't care. Beyond the blinders of memories from just minutes before, there is no thought in his mind but a screaming need to get away from everything.

 _That night, dinner at his house wasn't any different from usual. That is to say, it was quiet, with only the tinkling of silverware against plates piercing the oppressive silence._

 _Riku thought to the raft. And maybe it's brashness from knowing that he'd be gone soon that makes him regain his nerve, or maybe he's simply forgotten the consequences of speaking up about the more fucked up parts of their family with his father dead and gone for years now._

'Family'. What he and his mother were, it was too generous a word.

He stomps down the road now, the dark of the night seeming to contort around the cheerily bright windows of unknown neighbors. If possible, the sight of them makes him even angrier.

Because within those windows there is light, laughter, the pleasant din of people who love one another by blood and by choice. Within those windows is a love Riku can never have for reasons he can't understand. Reasons he never had a say in.

 _The moment he speaks up, he regrets it. This time, the pain doesn't come from his flesh, though he remembers the shades of a sickly spectrum on his skin from a time when there were two parents in his life. The pain now comes from a place where no medicine or surgery can reach._

 _The ensuing argument is the most they've spoken to one another in literal years. An amount of time that would be unthinkable to well-adjusted people in well-adjusted households, but Riku and his mother are anything but. The most they've ever talked before this was curt exchanges of just enough words to cover the bare necessities, but nothing more._

 _But the thing about the argument that stands out to him the most is that while it's the first that he and his mother have ever had, it feels…old. Familiar. Like this is a point of contention that they've clashed about all his life, like the two of them have been engaged in a silent fight ever since Riku woke up one day and realized he didn't have with his parents what Sora, Kairi, and so many other kids he knew had with theirs._

 _Before that day, he had thought it was normal to feel that cold clench of his veins whenever his parents addressed him, even for something innocuous. Riku had thought it normal to feel every corner of his body coil up with stress and tension the moment he walked in through the front door._

 _But Riku is a quick learner, and it doesn't take him many years before Sora, albeit too young to consciously realize what she's done for him, helps him understand that his home is not normal at all. From there, when he came to know a number of the other kids and especially after Kairi arrived, that understanding was cemented._

 _And over time, Riku comes to understand a few other things: That adults can't help his situation, not permanently, not in a way that doesn't do so much more harm than if he'd just never asked them at all. That he shouldn't say anything to anyone other than Sora or Kairi about his circumstances, or risk getting those horrible looks of pity he's come to hate, like he's weak or a fuckup beyond fixing. And most of all, he finally understands that he is alone in this._

Riku dimly recognizes the area that he trudged to unawares. The houses cast familiar silhouettes against the roiling sky, and he looks up to the corner to see familiar street names.

This is Sora's neighborhood.

He halfway entertains the idea of stopping by, just like he did ever since he was very small, but immediately decides against it.

A shadowed corner of his mind hissed a hidden thought he didn't want to acknowledge: _Sora won't get it anyways. It's wasted on her._ Because no matter what she says and no matter how much they talk about it all, Sora doesn't get it. She's never experienced the absence of love. She's never experienced a mother that was never really there at all.

So he walks on. Riku doesn't know where he's going, but so long as it's away from his house, he doesn't care.

 _He tells his friends less about what is going on, deciding instead to act like everything's fine. And for a long time, that's because it is. When there's no parents around or mentioned, there's no painful reminders of how Riku feels like he's waiting for something that'll never happen. So he continues the spars with wooden swords, the traded jokes, the long nights spent watching the sky where each of them wonder about storms of shooting stars and strangers as young as them falling out of portals knowing nothing but their names._

 _Riku thinks to the long-ago memory of a man telling him of a world beyond the islands, who made him swear on his keyblade that he'd do good by others in return for an escape. But the man never comes back for him, and Riku's sick of waiting. And over time, he convinces himself that likely the whole thing was a dream, or a cruel joke._

 _The fight hardly even consists of yelling, and it's nothing like the fights his parents used to have that he could overhear anywhere in the house. But it is brutal nonetheless and cuts him right to the bone. Before he knows it, he's scrambling to pick up the pieces. He's not trying to win anymore, but simply trying to get answers._

" _I…I tried to do everything_ right. _I tried to be good for so long." Riku finished, glancing to the walls, the floor, anywhere but ahead of him. "What did I do wrong?"_

" _It's not about what you do. It's about what you are."_

He isn't sure where he is right now, but he doesn't care enough to see if anything around him is familiar. Riku only walks, his eyes downcast and teeth gritted, and he can feel eyes on himself but he doesn't care enough to look and see who. Nobody says anything to him, anyways, not the few pedestrians out at this hour.

Step. Step. Step.

 _He finally musters up the strength to ask the question he's not sure he wants the answer to. Somewhere in the back of his head, the small part of him detached from everything, notes the irony of it: Riku's always prided himself on being the best at everything he can, the strongest, but things like this require an entirely different strength than what he's equipped for. The realization leaves a bitter taste in his mouth and he tries to forget it as quickly as possible._

" _What do you mean?"_

 _She only chuckles derisively, her gaze steeled onto something faraway._

 _The entire time they've been talking she's never really looked at him once. Her eyes, as they have been for years, look through him. Like he's made of glass._

 _Riku is fed up with it. The despair, the confusion, it all bleeds away into one sharp, quick burst of impatient anger._

" _Why can't you look me in the eye and say what you mean by 'what I am'? Why can't you just say it—Mom, look at me. Look at me!"_

 _She sets down her glass with a clatter and rounds on him so fast he flinches, afraid that she might strike him. This time isn't like when he was small, he can fight back now, but that doesn't stop the old fear._

"' _Look at you'? You really want me to look at you? Okay, fine, I'll look." Her tone began in a hiss, and slowly raised to a shout. "You want to know what I see when I do? I see a night where I was chasing a love that never existed. I see a day where my own desperation to get back the love of a man that never loved me in the first place ruined my life. I see a failed career. I see irrelevance. I see a prison. I see a relationship I should have known was septic from the start but couldn't realize because I was too blinded by my own desperate need to not die alone. And look where that got me!" She raised her hands to gesture all around them. "Look at me, all alone. Because that's what people like you and me end up as, Riku, alone. There is nobody to love us, nobody to tell us things are going to be okay, because_ we are unlovable. _All we are is poison."_

 _To that, he has countless rebuttals and yet nothing to say._

 _When Riku does speak, it's almost unconsciously, the words coming out with no filter or forethought._

" _We don't have to be alone, Mom. We still could have had each other."_

 _To say it makes him feel vulnerable. To say it, and_ mean _it, makes him feel naked._

 _His mother's looking at him still, but there's no fire in her eyes anymore. There is nothing in them at all._

 _Riku makes to leave, but his hand stays on the handle of the front door for a moment. He knows it's childish to try once more, but he's never been good at letting go. He thinks to the raft._

" _I won't leave if you don't want me to. I won't go anywhere. But, I need to know that you don't want me to." He took a ragged sigh. "I need you to ask."_

 _(I need you to tell me you love me, even just a little bit. Even if it doesn't contain the words 'I love you.')_

 _She doesn't say anything. All she does is shift her gaze, so that she's looking through him again. Something deep down inside gives a painful squeeze._

" _Mom," Riku's voice broke. She still didn't look at him. "Ask me to stay."_

Step.

 _He's desperate to know if there's a part of her that ever cared about him. She's his mom. Isn't that what mothers do? Aren't they supposed to go to the ends of the earth for their children? Aren't they supposed to tell their children not to do something dangerous? 'Don't go on the raft,' she's supposed to say. 'Don't go out to sea and leave me. Don't die the same way your father did, even if he was an asshole who deserved it.'_

Step.

' _Stay here, with me, because I love you and I want you to be okay.'_

 _But all she says is "I will not."_

 _Riku grips onto the door handle with bone-white knuckles and leaves. He doesn't slam the door behind him._

Step.

He walks.

The streets go from unfamiliar to familiar again, but it's not as if he's giving any conscious thought to where he's going. It's only when he reaches long rows of wooden planks that he bothers to look up.

The harbor. Around him, piers stretch on to form paths through the marina, where households who don't have shore space keep their personal boats docked. Riku traces a thumb over the sign marked with his surname, designating the section where his small rowboat is. If he's not going to Sora's house, he may as well go to the play island to calm down.

He rows, past boats lying in wait and buoys flashing into the distance. The wind is picking up by now, chopping up the waves, but they don't seem to touch his boat at all. Closely around him, the water is eerily calm, almost supernaturally so, but he doesn't think about it. Nor does he think about how the skies were predicted to be clear for the next week, yet the clouds look as if a storm is moving in fast.

Riku's not sure what to do for the night. He doesn't want to go back home at all, but he doesn't know where else to go. There's a conflicting need to leave the play island as he rows towards it, like an instinct in the back of his head registering something foreboding that he doesn't know, fighting a strange pull for him to wander closer to it.

He docks the boat ashore, just enough to leave it moored onto the sand where the waves can't carry it off and mutters a curse as the surf seeps through his pant leg and shoes. In his haste to go, Riku forgot to put on his dark blue waders that he usually wore, and instead was only in his jeans. At least there were spares on the raft for when they left in the morning. He'd just worry about it then.

Riku stands on the shore for several minutes and does nothing else. By now, most of the fury had been worked off in the effort of rowing to the play island, and with some literal and figurative distance from what had happened had made it so that the rage had stopped drowning out everything else he was feeling. He was still angry, but in some way or another Riku had always felt at least a little bit angry about his family. It could very well be that way for as long as he lived. And he was sad—that could be there forever too. But both of those things felt somewhat muffled by the feeling of resignation and squandered hope.

The play island is empty at this hour, and it's a blessing. The shores echo with nothing but the crash of unusually high tides. The air howls with wind and the clamor of the boughs of trees and palms. Riku always did like it when the weather matched his mood.

He decides to stay at the play island for the night. It's not as if he hasn't done it before: He and Sora and Kairi would have sleepovers here sometimes in the past, curled up in sleeping bags in the cave. Riku would spook them with ghost stories by flashlight as Sora would doodle on whatever inch of wall she hadn't covered yet and Kairi would be roasting marshmallows by candlelight.

And behind them, overlooked but not forgotten, the door.

The door.

" _At the end, right before I woke up, it told me 'You are the one who will open the door.'"_

The fury comes back as if it never left, this time lined with the bitter pang of soul sickening envy.

It was supposed to be _him_ that would open the door. It was supposed to be him that would keep having the dreams of that key-shaped sword, wandering from one place to another—Riku wasn't an idiot, he realized later when Sora mentioned having a 'weird sword' in her dream very likely meant she'd dreamed of the Keyblade too—but no. Those dreams were Sora's now, apparently.

And it didn't matter that _he_ still had dreams every night of that door calling to him, opening up from the secret place to anywhere he could and couldn't imagine. Riku thought that part was still his, at least, but apparently not anymore. Everything seemed to come so easily to Sora. A happy home, a mother who loved her, an unfettered spirit. Of course destiny would come easily to her too.

Riku walked up the path to the cavern, past the small shack and the waterfall. He kneeled down under the thickest of the branches and crawled in, standing up once he was inside.

Through the corridor of stone, past the pale ghosts of drawings, and there it was.

The door hadn't changed one bit in all the years he's known of it. The walls changed over time, becoming more and more cluttered with sketches and marks and encroaching roots, but the door hadn't so much as a dent in it.

All these years of wondering, all these dreams…and it wasn't meant for him.

" _It can be opened now._ "

Riku nearly jumped out of his skin.

He swerved around, and behind him there was this hunched figure standing there in the cave with him. Riku didn't have any idea of when he might have walked in after him, the cave was silent the entire time he'd been in it, apart from the whistling howl from the wind running against the hole in the ceiling. No footsteps, nothing to announce this person's arrival.

Why did it feel as though Riku met him before?

"Who are you?" Riku took a half-step back. "What are you talking about?"

" _This world sleeps no longer. And when the world awakens, so too does its Heart."_ The figure stepped forward and Riku resisted the urge to step back again. " _As for who I am…consider me a friend of Fate."_

Riku said nothing for a moment, taking in the other's appearance. No face that he could see under that hood, just a black space where something should be, and Riku stifled a shudder. His body was still hunched, but less so, and the figure's robe draped in such a way that seemed as if there were no form underneath, no familiar bulk of any legs or arms, the sleeves seeming to _act_ as the arms instead. Crossed over what could be construed as his torso were two leather belts in the shape of an 'X'.

There were countless alarms going off in Riku's head now, but what the figure said gave him pause.

"What did you mean, 'it can be opened'?"

A dark chuckle echoed throughout the cave. " _It seems you can't remember either. No matter, the same has happened to me as a boy." He m_ oved closer and looked up to the door. " _What I mean is exactly that: The door you've pondered so long can be opened now. You couldn't figure out a way to open it because there_ was _no way. So long as this world slept, its Heart was closed off to the touch of Darkness."_

So much of what he said still didn't add up. And what's more, whoever he was kept talking in circles.

"I don't believe you. You keep raising more questions than you're answering—What's a Heart? Or Darkness?"

He chuckled again, louder this time.

" _How little you understand. The islands that imprisoned you, the oceans that formed your warden, all of it is part of the world in which you were caged. And just as people have Hearts, so too do worlds. These Hearts of which I speak are different from the hearts you have learned about, that pump Light and Darkness instead of blood, but it beats just the same. Once this world awakened, its newly-unlocked Heart began to beat in sync with all the other worlds', and it has given you the opportunity to escape from your home that you sought."_

He seemed to half walk and half glide towards the door, and Riku followed. The figure slowly raised one robed arm towards the wood of the door and felt with nonvisible fingers.

" _As for what is Darkness…I've studied it for so long that a lifetime more wouldn't be enough to answer that completely."_

"Then try."

" _You would do well to hold your pride when speaking to your betters, boy."_ They warned. " _Reality is made of more than physical matter. Darkness and Light are the bonds that hold everything together—Though neither can truly survive without the other, Light and Darkness are in themselves synonymous with Weakness and Strength. It is Light that will fail you when you need it most, but Darkness will never leave you. And it is Darkness that will help you gain the strength and freedom that you seek."_

Strength. Freedom. Everything he's ever wanted since he was small.

"Do you have proof of this?" Riku croaked. It all sounded too good to be true. But this could be his big break. Isn't this what he's been waiting for all this time?

He didn't need to see his face to know he was grinning.

" _All the proof you need awaits beyond this door. I shall guide you to opening it."_

His mind whirled. The first thought in his mind was of Sora, and how she was supposed to open the door. But that was quickly supplanted by a bitter steadfastness in his mind of how _he_ was there first, _he'd_ discovered the door, _he_ was the one with all those dreams, the one with dreams of the door even now, even if he didn't dream of the keyblade anymore.

But Riku's second thought was more inexplicable. He was almost afraid of opening the door. He'd wanted to figure out this mystery for so long, and the answer was right in front of him, but something deeper than bone was screaming for him to be careful, to watch out, to run away back to the comfort of endless contemplation rather than an answer, because this answer wasn't one he would want. But Riku stood his ground. What good was curiosity if he didn't care about the answer? What good was wondering, to near obsession, if there was never satisfaction?

"Show me how," Riku said, and then added, almost an afterthought, "Please."

" _Very well then. Stand in front of it and stand proud."_ Riku complied. " _Hold your hand out towards it, but don't try to reach for it physically. Reach for it with your Heart."_

"I don't understand." Riku spoke, "How?"

" _Belief. Trust. These are tools you'll need to attain rewards your body can't grasp. Believe in the Dark, believe in power and freedom, and countless realms will be laid bare for you."_

He closes his eyes, breathes deeply, and trusts.

There's a stirring in his chest, his Heart, he realizes now, though the two can feel the same.

— _A young boy stands on the shore alone, looking out to the setting sun. The man promised him freedom, that he'd come back for the boy, but here he is alone. Years later. The man is not coming back. —_

— _He wipes the blood from his nose in the quiet of his bathroom and detachedly is impressed by how he can hear them yelling through two locked doors and a separate story of the house. Fear curls and uncurls like an awful background radiation of his mind. —_

— _A promise between two children, a promise made on wooden swords and a necklace in the half-light of shooting stars. It seems so simple at the time, but time passes, and as the two of them grow up he wonders if promises aren't enough. If he is not enough. —_

Riku opens his eyes at the sound of a wooden groan. He gapes at the sight of the door opening, Light dancing merrily through the cracks, lighting up the cave like daylight.

The Heart of the islands…it's _beautiful._ Light of all kinds seems to come from one point in midair within the archway of the opened door: the glimmering spectrum of hues of stained glass, the raging blaze of wildfires to the steady crackling of a campfire, the fractured gleam of diamonds. It gave a trilling hum that sounded sweeter than any music.

And even from the short distance he and the figure were from that Heart, Riku could feel the air shiver with its power.

" _Well done."_

"I…I'd dreamed of this ever since I was little, but…I never thought I'd see this. What _is_ it?"

" _Pure energy. Light, Dark, and everything in between."_

"Dark?" Riku glanced from the figure to the Heart again. He noted that even in so much Light that the cave was lit up like midday he still couldn't see the figure's face, only that same dark gap where a face should be. "I don't think there's much Darkness in something that bright."

" _And that's where we come in."_

"Wait, what?" Riku looked to him for good this time, peeling his eyes away from the Heart to do so. That power was tantalizing, but something felt wrong about touching it. Corrupting it.

" _All beings need balance between Light and Dark. Even worlds. Too much Light is dangerous, and we must harness the Darkness to bring equilibrium. We must take this Heart."_

"I…I don't know."

" _You wanted freedom, didn't you? There is no freedom without power. And this…"_ The figure waved to the Heart, " _This is power."_

"Is this the right thing to do, though?" He looked to the Heart again. Power. Freedom. At what cost? "We're going to bring balance by taking it?"

" _Indeed. By submitting this world to the Darkness, there shall be balance. The power you get shall merely be a byproduct, you will be a hero for ending the tyranny of Light. And all that Darkness within you…there are no others better suited for the task."_

A hero.

No other suited for the task than him.

More than power and freedom, the idea of reclaiming his status of being something more, of being a hero, Riku wanted it so much that the idea of taking this world's Heart didn't sound too bad after all.

It'd be the right thing to do anyways, wouldn't it?

"What do I do?"

" _It is just as before. Only this time, you will have help. Taking a world's Heart is a strenuous task, so I shall assist. I, and friends."_

The figure gestured grandly around the cave, and the shadows around the room rose up to greet him. Clusters of glowing yellow eyes blinked into existence around the pair, along with gnarled hands and feet, the creatures' antennae twitching hungrily in the direction of the Heart.

" _I will give you some small measure of control over the Darkness. It is enough for you to touch the Hearts of worlds, and to navigate the pulses of Light and Dark that connect them. You can make portals of the Darkness with this, to escape your prison. Now, reach."_

And he did. Behind his closed eyelids Riku saw more flashes of memories this time, painful, but that made the Darkness stand out that much more. And as he opened his eyes, the Heart was gone, and only a tangible blackness lay beyond the opened door. The only illumination in the cave now was by the light of the creatures' eyes.

There was a small tinge of regret in him, but that was drowned out by how pleased he was with himself. That and the quiet hum of Darkness in the back of his mind.

Riku had power now. He could be free.

He chuckled to himself. _No need for a raft anymore,_ Riku thought.

" _Shall we take our leave now?"_

He considered that for a moment. He could leave now, but what of his friends? Riku didn't want to be without Sora. Or Kairi. A journey wasn't as much fun alone. He'd been here all his life, he could stay for a little while longer.

"If it's okay, I'd like to wait here." Riku added, "See if someone else would like to join me."

" _We shall meet again, then."_

The figure opened a portal, a Dark hole like a rip in reality itself, and he was gone. He didn't even leave footsteps behind.

At that, the creatures in the cave scattered, crawling both out the corridor and out the hole at the ceiling. They strongly reminded him of insects.

Riku walked out of the cave and back out into the windy shore of the play island, to the rickety wooden bridge that connected the larger portion of the play island to its small sandy outpost that Riku had spent so many days staring out onto the ocean on. He sat upon the bowed paopu tree with the roaring of the ocean in his ears.

And Riku waited.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _40 Minutes until the fall of Destiny Islands_

Dinnertime crawled by at an agonizingly slow pace. And the whole time, her head was _pounding_.

Kairi had long tuned out her parents' conversation, both of them chattering on about work or something or other while she absently shifted around small piles of fried rice. Maybe her mom was talking about something that happened in the office, she wasn't sure. Everything Kairi could hear sounded like she was underwater.

She distractedly chewed at some noodles, but it felt like she was chewing wool. It didn't have much taste anyway.

"You okay, sweetie?" It was her mom. Kairi hazily looked up at her and had to blink a couple of times so she wasn't seeing double.

"Yeah, I," Kairi scrunched her eyes shut and shook her head, trying to not see double again. It didn't work. "I think I'm getting a migraine."

"You have seemed to be coming down with something over the past couple of days." Her mother agreed, putting the back of her hand against Kairi's forehead to test her temperature. "Hmm. You don't feel warm."

"Is it okay if I can be excused?" She asked. "I want to lie down."

"Of course, dear." Her mother answered, before getting up and going to the cabinet and handing her a pill bottle. "Here. Take a couple of aspirins, that usually works for me."

Kairi nodded, and with the bottle in hand, she turned and walked to her room, barely hearing her dad call after her "Feel better!"

With the door closed behind her, she quickly downed a couple of pills before hauling herself over to her desk and turning on her computer. Kairi had opened a couple of sites she usually browsed but she kept zoning out, the clock blinking to five minutes passed, then ten minutes.

She was about to declare it useless and turn in for the night, but then there was a pull at the edge of her consciousness. And then Kairi felt pins and needles in her legs, and a sense of urgency. It was like that feeling of when you realized you forgot something, and you had to run back and get it. Except Kairi wasn't sure what it is she needed to get, but she had to go. Now.

Kairi stood, and the moment she did so she could see her vision begin to pixelate at the edges like television static. For a moment her sight went nearly black and she could feel her heart thump like crazy, and the feeling of needing to leave only got worse.

She began to walk. Out her bedroom, down the stairs, tiptoeing past where her parents were still chatting over wine and take-out. She slipped on her shoes and walked out the door, closing it quietly behind her.

Kairi looked up. The sky was dark, far darker than it should be for eight in the evening at this time of year. Usually, it would be sunset, albeit the last few dregs of it, the light still enough to see by. But tonight, the streetlights had turned on early, flashes of sheet lightning in the sky. Clouds had covered the stars from view.

And that's when she began to black out.

One minute, she's outside her front door, looking up at the sky and there's no static at the edge of her vision. And all the pain in her head clears for one moment as all she can hear is a voice in her head. Or that's what Kairi thought it was. Really, it seemed to be more of a part of her thoughts, a voice that didn't sound like any voice, telling her _Come. This way._

Another black out, and suddenly she's at the harbor where her personal boat is, the one she uses to go to the play island that her dad helped her build a couple of years after she arrived. Kairi feels like she's going to be sick and leans heavily on one of the posts on the pier as she can feel sweat bead at her forehead, her stomach roiling as much as the waves below. The lights of the pier glimmer as she looks up, and she loses her balance and is terrified she might slip past the rope fencing and fall into the ocean. Kairi can taste bile at the edge of her throat.

She blacks out again, and she's suddenly rowing the oars of her boat as hard as she can, the nausea gone and replaced by a feeling of frenzied concentration, like every cell in her body is at attention and scrambling to reach some unspecified goal. And she can hear that voice cry to her, _Please help._ The play island is close, close enough for Kairi to see Riku's boat already at the shore, but he doesn't seem to be anywhere she can see when she glances around.

Kairi blacks out, and now she's alone in front of that door in the secret place, the one Riku kept wondering about, drawings scrawled into the rock walls seeming to dance all around her as her head swims. Kairi stands at the threshold of it and she feels sick again, the static gathering at the edge of her sight. She has no idea what time it is, but suddenly it feels very important that she know.

She presses her fingertips to the door and tries to ignore the feeling that she's being watched. Kairi can hear a chorus in her head now, screaming _Princess, please, you can fix this, only a wielder like you can bring the Light back to me, hasn't it been done before?_

Kairi has no idea what to do. She stands there uselessly swaying, feeling ice spread down to her toes. And all the while the voice is still pleading with her to help.

Inexplicably, she can hear the sound of a door opening from somewhere far behind her. And then footsteps.

Kairi could recognize the familiar sounds of that shuffling run anywhere. It was Sora, and she was calling Kairi's name, asking if she was okay.

She tried to say a million things at once: _Everything's wrong, Maybe nothing's wrong but I think I'm going crazy, I'm going to be sick, Maybe he wasn't kidding at all about this thing because I swear this door is talking to me, Maybe I'm already crazy, Sora I don't know what to do but I need to do something, Do you know? Do you know what time it is? Every cell in my body seems to know what to do but me. Do you know what I'm supposed to do?_

But the only thing she could say when she opened her mouth was "Sora—"

And then, behind them, the door opened. Her sight cleared up enough to see black waves of _something_ move with the gust of wind that poured out from the door. And that gust was absurdly strong, sweeping Kairi off her feet, about to bowl her into Sora, who had opened her arms wide hoping to catch her.

" _One day when you're in trouble, the Light within you will lead you to the Light of another. Someone to keep you safe."_

Where had she heard those words before?

Before she could think on the matter any more Kairi began to feel the strongest feeling of vertigo in her life, worse than earlier. There was a pulling feeling in her chest now, like she was falling, and then it was as if she were watching herself in the third person. She was still in her body, but she had lost the ability to do anything, and Kairi watched herself glide closer and closer towards Sora, who was still reaching for her and now scrunched her face up readying for impact. Kairi tried to ready for it too.

But it never came. There was an over whelming ringing sound in her ears for a split second, and the last thing Kairi saw was Sora's back as she phased through her.

And then, for the final time that night, Kairi blacked out.

* * *

 **SORA**

 _3 Minutes until the fall of Destiny Islands_

Sora never managed to catch Kairi.

She opened her eyes when she never felt Kairi landing and squinted against the gales. The door in the cave opened and out flew a rush of what looked like wind and smoke, throwing her off her feet and through the long corridor of the cave by the sheer force of the wind. And just when she saw herself reaching the end of the corridor, she braced herself for crashing against that other door that had appeared at the entrance, but it never happened. Everything went dark for a minute.

Sora came to with a face full of sand. Looking up, and blinking against the curtain of falling sand coming out of her hair, she saw that the rest of the play island was gone except for a small circle of beach and broken palm trees, strewn with scraps of wood from the broken structures she'd run and played on all her life.

The main island, her home, wasn't visible in the distance as it would have been normally. There was not even the ocean in sight around that small circle she sat upon now. All that was visible was a cloudy purple sky that was empty of stars.

She looked around. Kairi was nowhere to be seen. Riku was gone too, most likely sucked into that black portal thing he had summoned. The raft they had been working on so much, the reason she had come over to the play island in the first place, once she saw that storm brewing that threatened to destroy it—it was gone to wherever the rest of her home went.

She looked up. The purplish dark core of energy she'd seen above Riku when she'd last seen him had now graduated to a swirling red vortex, looking so much like some horrible bleak sun, interspersed with green and purple flashes of lightning. Sora watched as a palm tree was pulled towards it, its roots looking like hundreds of fingers desperately clawing at the earth to stay put, but it was sucked in. Sora's throat clenched.

And then, finally, she looked down. In her hand was that key-shaped sword she'd dreamt of so much in the past year, that she'd dreamt of just yesterday afternoon. Golden hilt, silver blade, capped off at one end with a tooth with the shape of a crown in the negative space, and at the other end it ended in a keychain with a shape formed of three connected circles.

' _Keyblade'_ , that voice had chanted to her as the yellow-eyed creatures from her dream had reared up around her in real life. She could hear their gnarled feet clawing at the wood planks of the pier even now, when they were gone with the rest of Destiny Islands. ' _Keyblade'_.

" _But don't be afraid,"_ the dream told her, " _You hold the mightiest weapon of all."_

" _So don't forget: You are the one who will open the door."_

The door.

 _Too late to open it now,_ she thought bleakly.

" _Riku! There you are, I was—" She stopped and glanced around him, searching. She checked behind her. "Where's Kairi? I thought she was with you?"_

 _When Riku spoke, it wasn't to answer her question._

" _I finally opened that door."_

" _What?"_

" _The door has opened, Sora!" He took a few steps toward her and opened his arms wide in anticipation. "Now we can go to the outside world!"_

" _What are you talking about?" Sora asked exasperatedly, "We've gotta find Kairi!"_

" _Kairi's coming with us!"_

 _Her jaw dropped. Sora glanced above Riku, to the swirling sphere of energy that blazed hellishly. Around them, black buglike creatures with glowing yellow eyes darted around, no longer constructs of her dream. These were real, whatever they were._

 _Kairi agreed to_ this?

" _Once we step through we might not be able to go back. We may never see our parents again, there's no turning back. But this may be our only chance. We can't let fear stop us!"_

 _Riku continued, "I'm not afraid of the Darkness, Sora. And you shouldn't be either. Come with me."_

 _He extended a hand towards her, and she shook her head._

" _Riku…" She trailed off._

 _Beneath him a dark portal yawned open. Thick black vines of Darkness snaked up his legs, and Sora took another step back before that portal and its vines could touch her, but oddly they didn't even approach her. It seemed their focus was reserved for Riku._

 _Whatever those things were, whatever was going on, she didn't have a good feeling about it. And Sora certainly didn't want Riku caught up in any of it. His hand was still extended, and he looked to her with his mouth curved in that proud lopsided smile he always seemed to have, but she could see right through it. There was a tension in his forehead that wasn't usually there with that look, a tautness to the arm he extended towards her._

 _Despite what he had said, Riku was afraid._

 _But if he wasn't afraid of what was going on around him, what_ was _he afraid of?_

 _Sora set aside wondering about it any more in favor of reaching back towards Riku, trying to pull him out of the portal he was sinking into, but she couldn't reach. And despite trying and trying, attempting to get a hold on him, another upsurge of that Darkness he had spoken of had swept in like a tidal wave and just like in the dream, they were separated, their arms still trying to grab onto each other for dear life._

 _The Darkness had made her lose consciousness for several moments. When she came to, Riku was gone, and in her hand was that key-shaped sword that she had seen so many times before, but never in waking life, its name chanted in her mind over and over—the Keyblade._

 _She ran to find Kairi._

Before Sora could think on what had happened any more, the ground began to rumble, more so than it was already. She scrambled to her feet, the keyblade in her grip, and turned to look behind her.

A gigantic figure was getting to its feet, and though it looked much like the black creatures she'd been seeing, with its similarly black countenance and glowing yellow eyes, it appeared vastly more ferocious. It was humanlike, though an aberration, with gnarled feet and a heart-shaped hole in its chest.

Sora could hear the chain of the keyblade jingle as she planted herself into the same position she'd done countless times before in spars, the weapon angled back in ready.

 _Mightiest weapon of all, huh?_ She thought. _Let's see what it can do._

Then both her and the monster lunged.

Sora caught the monster's outstretched fist with the teeth of the keyblade and jerked it back to pull the metal edge of it against her foe's skin, leaving a long gash down its hand that seeped out some sort of blackened sand. It reared, but she straddled its forearm and kept swinging, gash after gash seeping out more into the wind.

She leaped off when she saw the chasm in its chest begin to charge with a violet light and the air began to crackle with electricity. Sora landed sloppily, her shins taking the brunt of the force and protesting for it, but she burst into a run when she saw that violet energy begin to take shape and leave the monster to try and attack her. One bolt stung at her arm, her skin prickling painfully, and adrenaline took over and made her run faster. Sora glanced to the monster, and knew it didn't have too much strength left, with those Dark particles still seeping out of its wounds.

She kept running. One by one, the bolts tried to hit, but more often than not they petered out after too long and left scorched marks in the sand. When she could, Sora struck—a knee, a leg, the arms again, wherever she could reach as more gashes formed in its skin.

And all around them both, small pieces of the island they were on broke away and were sucked into that portal in the sky.

The monster fell to its scarred knees, and summoned more purple lights to its hand, the magic crackling with power as the monster held its opened palm towards the portal above, charging with energy.

The ground shook again as the monster closed its fist around the magic, light blazing out between its spidery fingers, and smacked its fist to the earth as another portal just like the one Riku had summoned formed just below. Out crawled those dark creatures Sora had seen earlier, clawing at the sand and the leaves and whatever they could reach, moving towards her.

Sora leapt to the portal, the keyblade ready in her hand, and she swung blindly and kept swinging wherever she felt the keyblade make contact. She could hear the creatures dispersing when sliced, the sound just like a burst of air, and she dared open her eyes after a moment to see the portal fading away.

The monster's fist was still held towards the ground as it swayed in its spot. Now was her chance.

Sora climbed onto its gargantuan fist and ran up its arm, stabbing the keyblade into its wounded flesh as leverage to climb up when the trek got steep. Behind her, more of that Darkness seeping out marked her path.

She had managed to climb onto its shoulder now. The monster had started to raise the arm she had climbed up on and reached to fling her off with the other arm, its face turned towards her. Sora grabbed the hilt of the keyblade and tilted it upwards, towards the monster's eyes.

She could tell when the keyblade hit, leaving a long ugly tear into the face, and now neither of the monster's eyes were glowing anymore. It was dead.

By now, Sora felt herself falling along with the monster's body towards the ground and jumped off at the last moment before contact. The monster's body never touched the ground, and it was sucked into the portal, its gaze now beady black.

She held on for dear life to a piece of wooden rubble that remained, as the portal glowered angrily far above and intensified in strength. Sora was now upside-down and still holding onto the rubble, the keyblade gone from her grip and who knows where. She wondered if she'd get it back. Her hands were aching from the fight and trying to hold on to the boards, splinters piercing the pads of her fingers.

The portal redoubled its strength and she screamed as she fell upwards.

And once more, everything went black.

* * *

AUTHOR NOTES:

Another alternate title for this fic: In Which I Can't Keep my Verb Tenses Straight to Save my Life.

A 22,000 word chapter is a freaking ton, I know, but I really wanted to get Destiny Islands out of the way ASAP. But, of course, true to my nature I had to take the long way to do so. Which meant discussing the exact line of reasoning as for why these kids' parents would be okay with their kids going on a perilous journey on a homemade raft in the canon events. And maybe some self-indulgence where I explored what hijinks the play island crew would get up to (and the entire time I spent writing those parts I had the Jackass theme stuck in my head).

And yeah, you might notice Kairi here is a natural politician and diplomat. It's almost as if...it's in her blood ∠( ᐛ ｣ ∠)_  
(she'll be good though I promise)

A few notes:  
1\. Irvine's from Final Fantasy 7, and Zell's from Final Fantasy 8. Kilika, and Bikanel are islands in the final fantasy games, with Zanarkand being a city. Which I thought would work for other islands' names in the Destiny Islands archipelago. Plus, it's canon that Zell's obsessed with hot dogs and his grandfather was in the military, and Irvine is canonically a ladies' man. Just wanted to note that that wasn't me!

2\. But what Was me was Ansem SoD's slightly switched dialogue here. I loved the villain we got in the first game, but he spoke in way too many overly theatrical non-sequiturs to have any real gravitas in the few parts we saw him, so I kinda swapped the robotic dialogue to have him make sense. (and yes, I know Coded shows Riku smiling at Ansem SoD like an old friend when he first meets him, so I tried to work that in a teensy bit) (kind of? maybe? if the games explain later on I'll just rewrite the scene entirely)

3\. Also, when Ansem SoD was asking Riku and Sora if they remembered, he's referring to the first 5 minutes of DDD. He doesn't actually mean anything by whether or not they remember, because speaking from personal experience w/ Young Xehanort he knows they don't remember. He's just messing with them. (I thought that part wasn't 100% clear, I'm sorry)

4\. And if you were paying super close attention, yes! Riku will not wear those godawful waders in my fanfic, not if I can help it! Sometimes canon divergence can be a force for good!

5\. This isn't really relevant, but I wish the seagull you stole the egg from in KH1 was a secret boss. Or if you could fight it as the true final boss of KH2 when they return to the islands. I thought it'd be funny to work that in here a bit.

EDIT: And I forgot, but I'll just mention here that DI is a reasonably advanced society in my story since you all probably noticed that too. It didn't make any sense for them to be the primitive society like they are suggested to be in the games (pre-KH2 anyway, they seem to speed up the technological process a bit in the scene w/ Selphie and Kairi in KH2) when their citizens wear clothes with things like modern zippers on them, which would require at least a 1920s-1930s level of technology (and yeah, I did actually check that) on top of knowledge of mining and refining metals and being able to presumably mass-produce them to a uniform standard, etc. So they're not like a Big Hero 6 level of advanced, but they're advanced enough to have cellphones and cars. But if you're worried this is a Phones AU, it won't be (until KH3, apparently) since none of their cellphones will have service offworld when they're going around. Cell towers don't exactly work when they've fallen to the darkness with the rest of the world, amirite?

edit 2: Oopsie poopsie I forgot some pronouns

edit 3: DANG IT I FORGOT AGAIN but this time to add in the note that 'Pequod' is the name of the boat in Moby Dick. Yeah, it's a lame name, and you'll see the other names Riku and Sora came up with way later on! I have a whole cute little scene already written for post-KH2. Also, there's like no agreed pronunciation for it-it either rhymes with 'toad' or 'f**kwad' (no kidding) and there's no middle ground apparently ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	3. Chapter 2: No One Ever Arrives by Chance

**A/N:** HEY GUESS WHAT THERE'S AN ILLUSTRATION FOR THIS CHAPTER NOW! I strongly encourage you to go to Ao3 to see it (this fic is under the same name and same username there)!

* * *

 **SORA**

Far above the rooftops of Traverse Town, one small yellow star was extinguished. And far below the rooftops, unnoticed amidst empty crates and barrels, a girl slept.

Sora came to at the sound of small footsteps clambering at the ground towards her. She had thought for a moment that it was the creatures she had fought coming back for her, but it turned out to be a dog instead. The dog licked at her cheek, waking her up more, and Sora sleepily glanced at it.

It didn't look like any dog she'd ever seen before, even if it behaved just alike, with its wagging tail and tongue lolling out of its mouth. It looked more like a cartoon.

"What a dream…" Sora sleepily trailed off, thinking herself to be in another dream where she'd run around with the keyblade and visit strange worlds with stranger inhabitants, this dog presumably one of them. Sora closed her eyes again.

And then the dog shoved at her. _That_ woke her up for good this time.

"This isn't a dream!" She yelped, and finally looked around.

It appeared that she was in an alleyway of some sort. It looked not unlike the streets of Destiny Islands, with the same friendly glow of streetlights, but whereas the islands had pavement for roads, this place had cobblestone. The buildings looked to be made of wood with mortar walls, just like the houses out of a fairy tale. Here and there hung rows of string lights that glowed against the night sky. Which, as Sora looked, seemed much emptier of stars than the sky she knew from the islands that blazed with countless lights. Here, there was only a few dozen at best that fitfully blinked above.

Wherever she was, this certainly wasn't Destiny Islands.

Which meant… _she was on another world._

Sora stumbled to her feet and peered down at the dog, who had continued to watch her with its tail still wagging. Now that she looked, Sora could see that it wore a green collar.

"Do you know where we are?" She asked. Sora figured some of the animals in her dreams of other worlds could talk, so presumably this one could too.

But it didn't reply. Instead, the dog gave one last wag of its tail and scampered off down the alley and out of sight. She called after it to no avail.

Sora glanced around the alleyway again. Other than that dog, she was the only one here. Her first thought was of her friends—Did Riku and Kairi make it off-world too? Or could they have…

No. She wouldn't think about that. Riku and Kairi were both among the most capable people she knew, they _had_ to have made it out safely.

Her second thought was of that keyblade she'd had. It wasn't anywhere in the alley she could see, and Sora figured it probably got lost in the wreckage of the play island with that fight. She couldn't quell the small tinge of regret she felt for losing it.

With nothing else to do, Sora wandered out of the alleyway towards where she had seen that dog went. The dog was long gone, but what greeted her instead was a town square of some sort, with more of those fairy tale buildings whose rooftops touched to the sky. Crooked streetlights lit the faces of the few people that were around, revealing a number of melancholy expressions. Storefront lights helped illuminate the rest of the square. And along the far wall, over a giant door, glowed a sign that read 'Traverse Town'.

Turning around, Sora caught sight of a brightly lit sign marked 'Accessory Shop'. And with one last glance around the town square and its inhabitants, she decided to try the shop for information about this place instead. It seemed more inviting.

The door opened with a small creak, and as Sora stepped inside she saw small rows of jewelry in display cases around the room. In one corner, in front of a wall of more jewelry displays, sat a small couch and footstool. In another corner sat an extinguished fireplace.

"Hey there, how can I help—Aw, it's only a kid."

It was an older man that spoke, with blonde hair pushed back by a pair of goggles. He was hardly the sort of person you'd expect to find running an accessory shop. His gruff demeanor reminded Sora more of the mechanics and ship hands that worked in the harbors back on the islands, and he looked like he'd fit right in among them.

"I'm not a kid!" She protested, going to the counter. "And the name's Sora!"

"Okay, okay, simmer down. So why the long face, Sora? You lost or somethin'?" The toothpick in his mouth shook up and down as he talked.

"No!" Sora reflexively insisted, but then reconsidered. It wasn't the brightest idea to refuse to be straightforward with someone you sought to get help from. "Well, maybe. I saw the sign outside said 'Traverse Town', but where are we exactly?"

"Huh?" His brows knitted together. "Well, you're in the accessory shop."

"Okay...?"

"And you're in Traverse Town."

"I got _that_ part, gramps! I meant if we were on another world or not!"

"Oi! Don't call me 'gramps', the name's Cid!" He huffed. "Anyway, I'm not sure what you're talkin' about with that. Why don't you tell me what you mean, exactly?"

With no better ideas, Sora started from the beginning. About the islands and her and her friends' raft plan, the coming storm and how she'd left when she saw it brewing and threatening to destroy their work. About Kairi and Riku, and how she was looking for them. And finally, about the keyblade, and the shadows that she had encountered in that fight on the play island.

"Well, this sure ain't Destiny Islands." Cid finally responded. "Traverse Town is a catchall sort of place. Newcomers arrive all the time just like you, from all sorts of worlds. Try looking around to see if your friends made it off okay."

"Sounds like a plan, gramps." Sora teased as she went to the door, snorting at his peeved expression.

"I'm no gramps, kid!"

"Not a kid!" She reminded him as the door closed behind her.

"Oh yeah? I'll stop calling you 'kid' when you stop calling me 'gramps'—Ah, she can't even hear me." Cid sighed to himself in the empty shop. On the far wall, a clock ticked, making the only sound in the room.

"These newcomers are getting too young, and I'm getting too old for this." He murmured sadly and turned to walk out the archway behind him. "Better tell Leon and Yuffie 'bout that keyblade so they can watch out for her."

* * *

 **RIKU**

He awoke on a cold, rough surface.

The first thing Riku noticed of his surroundings was the sound of water. Any resident of Destiny Islands knew the sound of the waves, but this didn't sound likes waves at all. Nor did it sound like the babbling of a brook, or a river, or even the quiet laps of a pond. If he had to guess, it sounded closer to the constant bellow of a waterfall, but it didn't quite match that either.

Riku opened his eyes. As it turns out, the sound _was_ coming from waterfalls all around him, but the water rushed upwards against gravity, making for an oddly reversed imitation of the sound he knew. He stumbled to his feet and immediately regretted it. His skin prickled, his arms and legs ached, and there was a crick in his neck from how he slept. Riku held a hand to his head for a moment to try and stifle the dizziness.

"Where…am I?"

There was no response but the sound of the falls.

Riku saw that the surface he had come to upon was some sort of a broken piece of pavement that floated above the water far below. And all around hovered similar platforms of broken-off roads, with large slabs of ice between them in the air. Beside him was the wooden sword he had sparred with for so long, lying forgotten.

When Riku opened the portal below him, he hadn't had any destination in mind. His only objective was to get away and get to another world. And the moment he opened his eyes he knew he did exactly that. Wherever he had ended up, it didn't look to be anywhere remotely resembling the islands. The only similarity Riku could see was the sky: It was tired, orange, the last few dregs of daylight before night's curtain fell on everything. But whereas the islands' sunsets still seemed optimistic, promising a dawn after the dusk, the glow of this place felt final. Like the sun was still fighting a perpetual battle before it would succumb for good. Riku couldn't explain how he knew.

If he had managed to make it off the islands, did Sora? Or Kairi?

Riku couldn't see them anywhere. Not on his platform, nor the others around him, when they floated low enough for him to see.

"Sora?" He whipped around, eyes darting to and fro. "Kairi?"

Nobody answered.

" _I'm not afraid of the Darkness, Sora."_ He had said, _"And you shouldn't be either. Come with me."_

But Sora did not reach him in time, and Kairi was who knows where.

Riku had escaped alone.

Back on Destiny Islands, there is a legend that goes along with the star-shaped fruit that grows on the trees. The paopu fruit.

Nobody was certain as to how the legend itself came about. Some argued that the first islanders saw how the stars in the trees mimicked the stars in the sky and thought that two people eating the same fruit could help them navigate their destinies so that they stayed together, just as the stars in the sky navigated them back homeward. Others argued that the fruit _was_ the stars in the sky, once. That they had fallen to the ground in a great shower of shooting stars during the very first days of the islands and took root, and if two people shared a fruit from the trees those stars had become, that their destinies would combine into one because the stars that fell sought to recombine back into one.

Either way, the message was the same: Share this, and you'd never be apart. Share this and no matter how horrible things could get, _worse_ could never become _worst_ because at least the two of you would have each other.

Kairi wasn't here, but she was the smartest and had the most common sense of all three of them. Kairi was able to find her way, he knew, and he'd try and find her as soon as he could. Apart from that, he remembered a distant time when neither he nor Sora even knew she existed, and if he could make it then, he could make it now. As selfish as that felt to think about, it was the truth.

But Sora…

There had never really been a time when Sora _wasn't_ there. Even for those months when Riku had tried to avoid her to avoid getting hurt, there was still always that possibility that he could just go to see her anytime. And it was a comfort.

Riku knew Sora would be okay. She could beat Wakka, Tidus, and Selphie in spars almost as easily as he could, and even when he wasn't going easy on her—because he would always feel guilty if he managed to hurt her in their spars, even when she told him not to be—it could still be a struggle sometimes to win.

But he had never truly gone without her in all his life, and the idea of doing so terrified him.

Riku shivered.

He'd never thought much about the romantic implications of the paopu fruit legend, that was more of Selphie's thing. But if they all shared a paopu fruit, would they have come here with him? Would they have been able to fulfill their dream of traveling different worlds together and finding Kairi's home world?

He sank to his knees.

"I should have tried that paopu fruit thing." Riku murmurs.

There is no response this time, either. There is no sound around but the backwards rush of waterfalls, and the quiet rustle of the boy raising one hand to clutch at his chest. At his Heart.

* * *

 **SORA**

After leaving the accessory shop Sora had wandered through the First District calling out to her friends, while keeping an eye out to see if her keyblade had ended up somewhere nearby. She hadn't had any luck, nor had she had any luck with asking around if anyone in the square had seen anyone matching her descriptions. She'd thought she had seen _Tidus_ of all people at one point, but it turned out to be some other kid that looked uncannily like him apart from having brown hair instead of blond and a slightly different outfit. Sora had excitedly gone up to him, but then realized her mistake as soon as he turned around when she said hello. He wasn't able to help her much, but he did mention that there were two oddly dressed newcomers like her wandering around in the Second District, and it gave her hope.

She walked up the far steps towards the entrance to the Second District. The moment she had opened the doors she had hoped to be greeted with the sight of her friends, but it turned out all that was waiting for her was a fight.

The first thing she saw was a man hurriedly running past her on the balcony of the plaza she had walked in on, his face twisted with panic. Before she could try and see what had happened to him the man collapsed to the ground.

"Hey-!" Sora called out, before trying to race towards him to help. But she was too late. A glowing thing shaped like a heart glided out of the man's chest with his face still frozen in fear as he watched before his body faded away. Sora froze, too, as she saw the glowing heart-like thing float slowly through the air, and its radiance was soon extinguished as a black wave overcame it. A black wave just like the ones on the play island.

The darkened heart started to shift, morph, until it no longer resembled a heart at all. It turned into a small humanoid creature that uncurled itself from the fetal position and landed on the balcony with gnarled feet, and revealed that it had become just the same sort of being as the ones that infested the play island before Sora left through that portal. It blinked two small glowing yellow eyes at her, and Sora could see that instead of the simple black appearance the other shadows she saw had, this one instead wore a helmet of some sort and had a red heart-shaped emblem on its chest, crossed with two barbed vines.

She thought the creature might come after her just like its kind she had encountered before, but it appeared to not be interested in her in the least. The creature scuttled off, its steps clacking on the pavement, and disappeared into a small black portal.

Sora ran forward into the space where the man had fallen, and the creature had appeared, but both were gone by that point. It was as if they were never there.

She shuffled the incident to the back of her mind as she saw black shadows moving in the corner of her eye. It was more of those plain black creatures she had seen, and compared to the other one that had just appeared and disappeared, these ones were moving towards her. Fast.

"It's those creatures from the play island!" Sora jerked her head around to assess how many there were.

Sora had already slid into her sparring stance before she realized she had nothing to fight with. The keyblade was gone, or so she had thought. Hardly a second later it landed in her outstretched hand as if it never left, and she looked at it with momentary surprise before looking back to the shadows with a scowl.

Sora twisted forward with the weapon held in front of her, its teeth facing out against the creatures, and she yelled with every lunge she took. Every time she landed a hit on the creatures, she saw the keyblade gave off twinkles of light with a tinkling sound. The creatures, once hit, gave those same small gusty noises just as the other ones had back on the island. And just like the behemoth she had fought, small waves of black dust seeped out of their wounds.

One lunged for her, its feet clawing against the cobblestone, and Sora had heard the noise before she saw it readying to attack and it helped her to brace for it. It collided uselessly with the guard of her keyblade, its small nails leaving scrapes on her forearm as it tried to gain a grip on her.

Sora shook the keyblade to get it off and flung down the weapon so that the weight of its end bludgeoned the creature. It made no death rattle as it was struck, silently dissipating into nothing with hardly a breath. A small glowing heart spiraled out of it into the sky, just the same sort of heart as the one that landed out of the man minutes earlier.

She did a twisting sort of pirouette move after that and managed to strike two of them at once. Sparkles rained out of the keyblade around her as it made contact and it mixed with that dark dust still seeping out of the remaining creatures.

One had managed to grab onto her jacket and Sora could feel it trying to crawl up her back, and as she hurriedly took off her jacket to twist it around above her head, the creature holding on then let go and bowled into one of its companions with another breezy huff. The incident appeared to be the last straw for the creature that was smacked into, and it dissolved into the night with another glowing heart winding towards the sky. That made two.

The one that had hit it stumbled to keep standing, and Sora noticed this quickly, taking advantage of the weakness by hitting the creature twice in short order and allowing herself a moment to watch with exhilaration as it sank to a kneel and crumbled to nothing. Another heart flew to the sky along with the others.

But her celebration wasn't to last long. Before she realized it, the last two creatures had lunged for her simultaneously and latched onto her arms.

"Ack!" Sora angrily cried out as they tried to swipe at her, leaving small cuts as they went. She pulled her shoulders close and flung her arms out awkwardly, trying to fling them off without letting go of the keyblade at the same time. One fell off, its grip not as tight as the other's, who only fug in further. But with one hand free Sora was able to reach out and grab the remaining creature and hissed in pain as its claws left marks and tore her sleeve a little. She flung it to the ground hard and used the flat of her keyblade as a bludgeon again repeatedly on the one that hadn't let go easily. Sora didn't stop until it finally vanished with a last feeble poofing sound with another heart escaping.

And with that, there was only one left. Sora turned to lock eyes with the remaining creature, and raced to hit it, but it had done a strange motion where it became two-dimensional and sunk to the floor and she missed. Sora backed away, having a feeling it would follow, and once she saw it had risen out of the ground again in the corner of her sight she twisted around quickly to dart forward in a lunge, a move she had learned from Riku back on the islands, and was satisfied to see the flat tip of the keyblade strike the creature's head.

She knew it didn't have long now, the creature seemed to be made more of black smoke than any solid matter at this point. Its step wavered, and they both lunged for each other once more.

"Come on!" She goaded the creature, and landed one, two, three strikes in quick succession, starlight blazing out of the keyblade every time it landed. And with that, the last creature disappeared, and one last heart glided to meet its friends in the sky.

Sora watched the hearts fade out of view for a moment, after making sure more of the creatures didn't appear. Their pink glow went higher, higher, until they disappeared among the few stars she could see.

And then she looked down at the keyblade.

Sora thought she had lost it after the play island fight against that giant thing, that it had gotten sucked into the portal and spat out somewhere else. But thankfully it managed to return right when she needed it. Sora outstretched her hand for a moment, watching it vanish with a blaze of light and return with another every time she flung out her fingers.

Sora felt her grin nearly split her face. She tested it for a couple moments longer, watching the keyblade disappear, reappear, and disappear again. She tried it with her other hand and toyed around with having the keyblade vanish from one extended hand and reappear in the other, back and forth.

"That is _so_ neat." Sora laughed, making it continue its dance from hand to hand.

"You're right, that is pretty neat." A new voice spoke from behind her, and Sora quickly looked over to see a slightly older girl watching her. She was wearing an odd outfit, with a yellow scarf and a blue headband tied around her head that swayed in the breeze. The girl hoisted a large shuriken over her shoulder and gave Sora a grin. "But you know what would be even better? If you gave that to me: The Great Ninja Yuffie."

"No way, I don't care who you are! I just got this back!" Sora held onto the keyblade with an iron grip and tilted it away defensively.

Yuffie sighed. "Oh man, I thought this would be easy."

Yuffie then reared back and charged the large shuriken with a bluish glow and hurled it towards Sora. Sora braced, expecting it to hit, but then opened her eyes when she never felt it make contact and instead passed by harmlessly. Sora guffawed at that.

"You missed—Ack!" She exclaimed when the shuriken looped back around in a boomerang motion and hit her in the back. The sharp points of it _stung._

"Good ninjas don't miss, kid. And I'm great!" Yuffie retorted as she darted in a wide arc around Sora to gain some distance. Once she got out of range, Sora could see she was withdrawing more shuriken out of her waistpouch, and she ran to get closer before Yuffie could throw them.

She wasn't successful in closing the distance entirely, but she did manage to get nearby enough to where the shuriken wouldn't hurt so badly if they did manage to land on her. Which some of them did, but Sora was able to keep her eyes on the rest enough to strike them away.

"I'm," Sora started as she battered one shuriken away with her keyblade with a metallic clamor. " _Not,_ " Sora growled as another one landed, the tip sticking into her leg slightly. "A," _Chink!_ "Kid!" She yelled as she managed to meet the last shuriken with her keyblade and redirected it back at Yuffie.

The shuriken being redirected back at her and landing dazed Yuffie for a moment, and it was enough. Sora closed the remaining distance and swung her keyblade blindly, trying to fend off the girl and end the fight for good.

Sora could tell it weakened Yuffie, but it wasn't enough. She reached her large shuriken and grabbed it up before Sora could try kicking it away. She charged it again after jumping for more distance.

"This is gonna hurt!" Yuffie warned as she tossed it.

Sora tried to keep an eye on it, but it was difficult as Yuffie had used the distraction to come in close and throw more smaller shuriken from the shortened range. Sora whirled around quickly to fend her off, landing more blows, but this time the bursts of light coming off the keyblade kept her from being able to see the glow of the large shuriken as it flew towards her.

With a dull clanging noise, it smacked Sora on the back of the head. And as she passed out the last thing Sora saw was Yuffie's boots stepping closer as she kneeled down to inspect the damage.

"That's some fancy footwork you had there, kid. Almost as fancy as mine." Yuffie angled her head a little and saw that Sora had completely passed out. And as she picked up the dropped shurikens and the keyblade, she remarked, while hoisting Sora up over her shoulder, "Still can't believe I beat Leon to it and found you first. He must be slipping."

* * *

 **RIKU**

"And what do we have here?"

Riku heard her before he saw her. He looked up to the other platforms and spotted a tall woman with improbably green skin looking back at him with an inscrutable smile, and watched as she entered through one Dark portal she summoned and exited from another that opened up right in front of him. A raven cawed from far off and flew past the rocks and chunks of ice to alight upon her staff.

She looked like a tall dark flame, with the tattered black sleeves of her robes akin to the ragged twists of a wildfire. He could see glimpses of another set of robes underneath the black, luxurious purple and maroon fabrics peeking out that appeared much more carefully tailored and matched her makeup. The collar of her robes jutted out in two tips like spikes, and atop her head was a horned headdress that gave her a devilish appearance. She gripped a gold staff taller than him with one hand, and the raven that sat upon it dug its talons into the small green orb that capped the end of it. The bird angled its head and peered down at him with a glare.

She would have looked imposing even in the bright daylight of Destiny Islands. Yet in this world, with the dying light of its sun, she looked downright ominous. Riku's small measure of control over the Darkness given to him by the hooded figure had made it so that he could especially feel the Darkness and power roiling off of her like an avalanche. But even without that ability, her presence had a gravity he couldn't put into words.

"Who are you?" Riku spat, shifting so that his stance was more guarded. The painted smile she wore got even wider.

"I am Maleficent, and this raven is my familiar, Diablo. And may I ask for yours?"

' _No, you may not'_ is what he wanted to say, but the figure's words from earlier came back to him. He couldn't afford to push away anyone that could help him. Riku flexed his fingers, remembering the feeling of power at long last. Freedom.

Riku may not have had his friends by his side but at least he was free from the islands. He had power, even just a little bit. And now he might have found someone that was willing to help just like the figure did. Appearances weren't always everything, maybe he could trust her. Somewhat.

"Riku." He answered and watched her smile get wider still. "What is this place? Where are we?"

"A place no one ever arrives at by chance. And as for 'where'…" Maleficent trailed off, and swept one arm upwards towards the floating platforms. Riku could feel a wave of _something_ in the air as the rocks and ice ceased hovering up and down and instead parted to either side, revealing a vast twisting citadel that looked like some sprawling beast both organic and inorganic. Its visage was alive with capillaries of copper and steel that puffed out alternating plumes of Dark smoke. And on the front of it, facing them, was emblazoned a giant symbol shaped quite like a heart, but the end of which curved into three points and it was crossed in the middle with two barbed lines.

"Welcome to Hollow Bastion, Riku. My place of power, and the home of the heartless. Let me show you around."

* * *

 **SORA**

"Come on, lazy bum." A familiar voice spoke to her. "Wake up."

It was the third time she had passed out in the past twenty-four hours. Sora _really_ hoped it wouldn't become a pattern.

Sora slowly rose so that she was sitting upright, holding a hand against her head so that her vision could clear. She wasn't sure where she had woken up this time either, but it looked like she was in a bedroom of some sort. Thankfully whoever had found her when she passed out once again seemed to at least have the good graces to put her in a proper bed. The cuts and aches she had sustained from her fight against the creatures and that girl still smarted, and she groaned. And then Sora looked over to see Kairi.

She stared for a moment in surprise.

"You okay?" Kairi asked.

"I guess?" Sora supposed. She was awake, at least, and not in the middle of a fight anymore. That, and she had managed to reunite with at least one of her friends.

Kairi looked her over for a moment.

"Those creatures that attacked you are after the keyblade." She continued, "But it's your Heart they really want, because you wield the keyblade."

Sora was still groggy from being knocked out cold, and she reasoned that that must be why not too much of what Kairi said made sense. The creatures following her trying to get the keyblade sounded logical enough, but they were after her heart? Like the organ? What could they want with that?

She dimly remembered one far off memory a few years after Kairi arrived on the islands, where she told her and Riku about being able to see parts of people's hearts and some sort of light in them, to mixed reactions. Sora had thought it cool, like magic, but Riku had been cynical of it. He had started to be cynical of a few things around then, Sora remembered, like how he told her Santa Claus wasn't real. Either way Kairi had never really brought it up again.

And then Sora remembered those glowing heart-shaped things that had come out of that man after he collapsed, and that had come out of those creatures just like on the play islands. That must be closer to what Kairi referred to.

Sora winced. Did Kairi run into those things?

Sora looked to her then. She seemed fine, thankfully.

"I'm just so glad that you're okay, Kairi."

"Kairi?" She replied in a now unfamiliar voice. "Who are you talking about? I told you, I'm the Great Ninja Yuffie."

Sora blinked hard and rubbed at her eyes. When she opened them again she saw the formerly red hair had turned into black, and her outfit shifted. Yuffie resembled Kairi in the face, but not much. Maybe Sora wasn't so okay after all.

They both heard a snort come from the corner of the room.

"Seems like things are worse than you thought." The man spoke. Sora saw that he wore leather garments and a multitude of belts, with a large sword that looked halfway like a gun at the handle leaning against his side. One long scar ran down the middle of his face. "Wait until Aerith and Cid come in to find you scrambled the keyblade master's head with a concussion."

Yuffie paled.

"Well, I'm the great ninja! I overdo everything! It's not worth doing if it's not worth overdoing." She nervously laughed and looked back and forth between them. "But you _are_ okay, kid, right? Right?"

Sora pouted. "I told you I'm not a kid."

"See, Squall? She's perfectly fine."

"It's Leon." He corrected her with a huff.

"So, the keyblade." Sora looked to the doorframe of the room, against which the blade rested. This whole situation still didn't quite feel real, even if she'd been having dreams of fighting with it for several months now.

Yuffie looked thankful for the change in topic.

"Yeah. We had to get it away from you to shake off the heartless. Those creatures that attacked you." She clarified at Sora's blank look. "It turns out that's how they were tracking you."

This time, Leon stepped in to talk.

"It was the only way to conceal your Heart from them. But it won't work for long." He reached over to grab the keyblade and held it aloft. "Still, it's hard to believe you of all people are the chosen one."

Leon did one long swipe with the keyblade to test it, and it made a small swooping noise as it cut through the air. And then the keyblade disappeared into a flash of light, and Sora felt momentary panic at thinking it disappeared again, until it reappeared in another flash of light in her hand.

"Well, I suppose beggars can't be choosers." Leon finished, and Sora scowled at him.

"Why don't both of you start making sense! What's going on here?" She looked to both of them. "Seriously, I was trying to look for my friends before those creatu—those heartless and 'the greatest ninja ever' here decided to pick a fight. And now I'm here in some room listening to you two drop a bomb on me telling me that I'm the chosen one, which sounds cool except all it seems to mean is that those things will follow me everywhere because of one of my organs? What gives?"

Yuffie gave a low whistle.

"Seems things are worse than both of us thought." Leon sighed.

"I know Cid gave us the shorthand, but why don't you tell us what you know first?" Yuffie suggested. "Maybe we can fill in the blanks from there."

She gave them the same spiel she had given him, giving the basic gist on her friends and talking about Destiny Islands, and their plan to leave them. About the door that Riku opened, and the creatures that infested the play island, and how she had found herself with what looked like a giant key in her hand before that behemoth heartless appeared. And finally, how she had awoken here, and was trying to reunite with Kairi and Riku.

"Alright. Well." Yuffie finally spoke up, "First things first, you're right in that you landed on another world. And I'm not really sure how to tell you this, but the fact that you landed here in Traverse Town doesn't exactly bode well for your islands."

"What do you mean?"

"She means that you're here because your world fell to the Darkness."

"Wait, Riku mentioned the Darkness, too! And so did that guy with the hood!" Sora glanced at them both. "And what do you mean the world fell to it? I thought just the play island was invaded."

Yuffie and Leon shared a look for a moment.

"That door you said Riku mentioned opening, I think that's how the heartless were able to invade your world." Yuffie started, her face drooping with pity. "But the guy with the hood must have had a hand in it too."

"How do you know?"

"Because our world fell to the heartless too, ten years ago." Leon said as a scowl overtook his already dour expression. He looked at an unspecified point in the room away from them both. "We were young when it happened, and we only managed to find our way here because Cid saw the writing on the wall and got us out on his gummi ship before things took a turn for the worst. All around the city those heartless appeared, and people started to disappear, and we heard from what few newcomers found their way here after us about how black waves of Darkness overtook the entire world. Not long after that the news reached us that our homeworld was no more."

The entire world. Then that meant…

"So all of Destiny Islands is gone? Not just the play island?" Sora felt her panic rise in her voice. "What about my mom? Or Riku's? Or Kairi's parents?"

Neither of them answered her, but their looks of pity were enough. She looked down at the keyblade and her grip on it hardened so much her fingertips began to redden. Sora tried not to cry.

"There's still hope." Yuffie said, and Sora looked up and saw her walking over to sink onto the bed next to her through blurry vision. She wrapped an arm around Sora, who realized that her vision cleared suddenly because the tears had finally started to fall, and internally cursed at herself for it.

"Hope? How?"

"The heartless are lured by the Darkness in people's Hearts, and you can use the keyblade to stop them. That way you can keep anyone else from losing their loved ones, too. But it goes a little deeper than that."

After Yuffie, Leon spoke up, saying, "Every world has a keyhole, and the heartless seek these keyholes to cause the worlds' downfall. The keyblade has the ability to seal the keyholes so the heartless can't get to them, and the worlds will be safe from falling to Darkness. Have you ever heard of a man named Ansem?"

Sora shook her head.

"He was well known for his research into the heartless, and Hearts in general. Ansem recorded all of his findings in a series of reports, and while we're not sure exactly how much information was held in them, it had to be a significant amount. Somewhere in their pages there could be a way to fix everything."

"Could I see it?"

Yuffie answered, "If we had them, we'd be happy to let you look. But the problem is that their pages got scattered everywhere across lots of worlds. But another thing you should know is that for every world that falls, pieces of it scatter across other worlds. And that could mean that somewhere out there is your mom, and your friends."

"Okay," Sora reflected over what they said, and felt her grip on the keyblade loosen as she did so. Her thoughts turned optimistic, but then she thought of something else. "What about Destiny Islands? Could there be a way to bring them back?"

"Maybe, maybe not." Leon answered.

"But what about my home?" Sora looked to him. "My world?"

"Just because your world fell, doesn't mean your home did too." Leon said, and she angled her head slightly in confusion. "When we lost our world, we thought that was the end. That we'd lost everything. But we didn't lose each other. Yuffie, Aerith, Cid, and I—We may have lost the house that we lived in, and we may have lost our world, but we still had the family we made. We were still able to come together to rebuild the home we had here, in Traverse Town, along with everyone else that found themselves here. If you find your mom and your friends, you can come back here and we'll find a place for you too."

The room fell quiet then as they all processed what he said.

Sora felt an upswelling of hope in her once more, for good this time. He was right: Maybe home didn't always have to be a place. Sometimes it was a person. People.

"Wow, Squall, that might have been the most I've ever heard you speak at once." Yuffie teased him gently, but Sora could tell she was genuinely happy with him. "And the sappiest."

"It's _Leon_ ," he repeated, and shrugged. "And it's true. Let's go join Aerith, she should be there by now with the other two that were looking for the keyblade."

"Looking for me?" Sora asked, but any response Leon would have given was cut short by Yuffie's shout.

"Leon!" She pointed to the empty corner of the room, where a dark portal just like the one on the play island had appeared. Sora readied her keyblade as Leon hoisted his gunblade into the air above him.

Out of the portal spawned a heartless just like the one that the man who collapsed earlier seemed to turn into. It chattered menacingly and turned its glowing yellow gaze to them.

"Yuffie, go!" Leon barked at her, and Yuffie darted through the door into the room next to theirs. Sora heard an outcry as she did so, but she didn't look to see what happened. "Sora, let's go!"

Before the heartless could attack, Leon grabbed it by the helmet roughly and threw it through the window with one hand, shattering it. It flew out into the night in a shower of broken glass and Leon pursued, with Sora following right behind.

"Don't bother with the small fry," Leon instructed her over his shoulder as they landed roughly on the pavement outside and were quickly surrounded by identical heartless. "Find the leader. Let's go!"

They both ran through the entrance to the Second District just beside the hotel they were in and quickly split up. Leon went down another alley, slashing through heartless as he went, and Sora kept running until she reached the neon lights and concrete structures of the Third District. Heartless sprouted up around every direction, and she swiped away at the ones directly in her path, but she mostly ignored them.

Sora looked up when she heard a commotion from above, thinking it to be the heartless she had to find, but instead it looked to be…a duck and a dog?

She paused for a moment, thinking back to the few glimpses she remembered of her dreams, and quickly realized that if she didn't move they'd fall right on top of her.

Sora broke into a run, her sight alternating between her surroundings and the sky, but it wasn't enough.

"Woah, wo-o-a— _Oof!_ " Sora exclaimed, as they crashed atop her.

They all took a moment to get their bearings straight, stars still sputtering in their eyes, before the two looked to the keyblade in Sora's outstretched grip. And then they spoke excitedly in unison.

"The key!"

* * *

 **RIKU**

"Tell me what you know." Maleficent requested, after they made their way through another Dark portal she had summoned and found themselves on the outer walkway of the citadel entrance.

Riku looked up to the overly large stone doors that formed the main entryway, and the carvings of thorned vines crawling up and down their exterior. The Dark portal had left the feeling of pinpricks on his skin and caused a dull ache in his Heart to form, both of which Riku ignored.

Without any better ideas, Riku had told her almost everything. Almost. He told her about his and his friends' plan to leave Destiny Islands and how they had gotten separated in the end, and about the hooded figure that had come and offered him a way out. And finally, Riku told her the figure's words on Darkness and Light.

Maleficent chuckled at that.

"Balance, hmm?"

"Yes?" Riku gave her a questioning look.

They both walked along the passage from the central keep of Hollow Bastion that she had just shown him, and were now going to see the bailey of the citadel. All along their path various forms of heartless scuttled about, unconcerned with them. The entire citadel seemed to be poorly lit, with torches of green flames as the central means of lighting. The main theme of the décor continued to revolve around motifs of thorned vines and roses, and Riku could see evidence of it nearly anywhere he looked.

"No matter. I know of whom you speak, and he is not wrong when he says Darkness is strength. Nor is he wrong when he speaks of the need for balance with it. Too much Darkness, and it will consume your Heart, just as too much Light will consume your mind. I have known many a fool that gave all of themselves to the Darkness and were worse off for it, and that's if they managed to survive. I would say you should take care to make sure you don't end up the same, but I can tell you're a smart boy."

Riku didn't let whatever flattery he felt at the compliment leave any cracks in his guarded exterior.

"Where is he? The man with the hood that I met?"

"If it is the man I am thinking of, he doesn't stay in one place for long. Nor does he seem to stay in one time for very long."

"He said we would meet again though." Riku was glad he succeeded at keeping any wistful tone out of his voice. The man felt familiar, and Riku couldn't stifle the small feeling that perhaps they had made some sort of a bond in their short time together. Apart from that, Riku had wanted to thank him for giving him freedom and helping him take his first step.

"Then I am sure you shall." Maleficent responded. "But he is not the only one that can help you gain back the glory you are looking for."

Riku looked to her just as confused as before, but with a degree of excitement this time.

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean is that I can help you find greatness too. For a price."

He bristled at that. Maleficent raised an elegantly arched brow at his glare.

"Nothing is free, Riku. I know that man didn't help you for free, even if you think he did. Light, Dark, everything has a price. The only difference with me is that I shall not ask you for a pound of flesh." She gave him another smile, and it was every bit as enigmatic as the first one she gave him when he first encountered her outside. Diablo cawed from where he perched on her shoulder. "Instead, I'll merely ask you to work with me. That's all."

"Really?"

"Indeed." Maleficent nodded, the horns on her head swaying with the motion. She continued, "Work with me and I will give you room and board in my castle, right here in the bailey, and instruct you on how to forge a weapon from your Darkness that will rival any other in strength." As she said this, her eyes flickered to the wooden sword he clutched in his hand. "If you do well, I will bestow on you a great number of other powers of the Dark, and you will be formidable."

Riku wanted strength ever since he was very small. It was his dream, to have enough strength to keep from being afraid and to keep anyone else he cared about from being afraid too.

He walked a few paces away to look out of one of the few windows in this place, to the light of the perpetually setting sun. Somewhere out there was Sora and Kairi. Whatever jealousy he felt before, they were still his friends. And they could be in trouble.

 _A weapon_ , a corner of his mind whispers from the Darkness. Riku remembers the dreams, remembers the closeness of companions and the old weight of a keyblade in his hand. He remembers the man he met so many years ago on the shore of Destiny Islands, who promised him a keyblade and never fulfilled his end of the oath. But maybe, Riku thinks as he looks back to Maleficent, that man wasn't the only one who could promise him such things. Maybe Maleficent was the one he needed to give him back those dreams. And more importantly, to make them into a reality.

Riku thinks of the dreams. And then he thinks of Kairi. And then, finally, he thinks of Sora.

"Alright, I'll do it. I'll work with you."

Maleficent grins for the first time since he met her. It's a curved, feline expression, and Riku can't help but feel like a mouse as he watches it. Diablo gave a warbling call that sounded almost like laughter.

"Excellent. I presume you are tired from your journey, so I will show you to your new chambers. Rest well, for in the morning I will give you your first assignment."

From there, she led him down more hallways, each more winding than the last, before they came upon a large wooden door at the very end.

The location itself was interesting, for it looked like it was part of a relatively untouched area of the castle. The thorned floral motifs were still present, but less so, their only evidence being a small winding vine that was carved into the walls of the hallway. There were still green flames that licked at the torches, that part looked to be constant, but their glow looked to be more yellowed than the flames he saw when they first walked in. As if whatever Dark influence on this place decided to mostly leave this part alone. And compared to downstairs, or many other parts of the place she had shown him, no heartless wandered here. Riku hadn't seen a single one for a couple of stories now.

She opened the door and he slowly walked inside. After Riku deposited his wooden sword on the bed, as he hadn't any bags packed and didn't take anything else with him when he left but the clothes on his back, Riku heard the quiet breeze of her robes as she left and walked back down the hallway. He turned back around and angled his head out the door.

"Hey, Maleficent?"

She stopped, and both her and Diablo angled their heads towards him. The yellow-green flames of the torches left a strange light in their eyes.

"Yes?"

"Why are you helping me so much? With everything?"

 _What's in this for you?_

"Why, dear boy, I've always wanted a son."

Riku's face immediately darkened. The sting of the argument he had had was still all too fresh in his memory.

He growled, "I'm not exactly looking for a mother right now."

She paused for a moment at this and carefully inspected him. Riku remembered the feeling of his mother looking through him, the feeling like he was made of glass. But while his mother did it to look through him towards something else, he got the sense that Maleficent was looking through him into his soul. He could feel his Heart writhe.

"Fair enough, I suppose." She accepted, and Riku wondered how much of himself she knew. He hadn't told her anything about his reasoning for leaving the islands, simply that he wanted to get out. But he sensed that she was able to piece together much more than he let on.

Maleficent suggested, "Then how about a fairy godmother?"

"What?" Riku narrowed his eyes. She had to be kidding. "You don't look like any fairy I've ever seen."

"Appearances can be deceiving." She started, and Riku could see the shadows on the wall begin to contort behind her, making her look as though she unfurled two bat-like wings though she hadn't moved at all. The torches began to flicker a little greener and it made for a new hellish light in her eyes.

"I am a fairy quite unlike most others, just as I can tell you are a boy quite unlike most others. But, my child, I assure you I am a fairy just the same."

* * *

 **SORA**

"The key!"

Before any of them could speak on the matter further, the ground began to rumble menacingly. And all around in the Third District, large barriers of stone erected themselves.

It seemed that the heartless had summoned the barriers, as both above and below more of the creatures spawned out of small Dark portals and gathered around. And then, they darted forward towards the three.

Sora got in her familiar sparring stance, and the duck and the dog got in stances of their own. The dog carried a shield, a determined expression crossing his goofy, cartoonish features as he reared back on his two feet. Beside him, the duck brandished a small staff, a similarly fierce look on his face as well.

It was the duck that struck first, giving a small quack as bolts of lightning—Sora did a doubletake at it—sprung from his staff and electrocuted several of the heartless. The action had called together a cluster of the creatures, and Sora took advantage by swinging her keyblade in a wide arc at them, watching with no small measure of satisfaction as a number of the heartless were destroyed immediately. That lightning had done a number on them.

Sora pivoted on her keyblade and did a sliding dash towards two of the heartless that the dog was struggling to keep his shield raised against. She laughed joyfully at how easily she slid around on the ground with the keyblade, small starbursts of light marking her path.

The second she got close enough, Sora swung her keyblade around again and smacked the heartless aside, and the dog gave her a quick thanks for it. From there they both teamed up, the dog raising the shield he carried against more of the creatures that had arrived that raised their claws threateningly as Sora lunged, and kept lunging some more, and with every 'thwack!' of her weapon more and more heartless dissipated into Dark smoke.

All around, bursts of fire, ice, and lightning showered down, weakening what few heartless were left before Sora could get her hands on them. She realized that fighting against the heartless now with these two at her side was far easier than earlier, when she had fought them off alone.

It wasn't long before the last heartless fizzled to nothing with a weary gasping puff, and the three took a short breather, lowering their weapons.

"So, uh, who are you guys? I'm—" Sora began to introduce herself, but was cut short as the ground rumbled again.

"Introductions later," The duck squawked, raising his staff as high as he could reach and charging it with a glow. "Something's coming!"

And not a moment later his words came true, as a rattling sound came from far above and got closer.

Sora saw that it looked to be like pieces of an armor, but not for any type of being she could recognize, that fell to the concrete with a deafening clang. She pressed a hand to her ear, which rang angrily with the noise, and as she wrenched her eyes back open she saw the pieces that had fallen begin to come to life and organize themselves into a larger heartless, that same three-pointed heart emblem with the crossing barbed vines in the middle on its chest plate.

The dog gave a startled yelp as another piece of the armor fell from the sky, a round thing with spikes coming out of it and holes on its visor. It fell perfectly onto the chest plate, forming the helmet of the heartless. And then, finally, it turned its unseen eyes to them, the pieces of its body angling themselves independently to do the same.

It was the duck that struck first, with a screeching bolt of electricity fired from his staff. The lightning danced across the metal pieces, creating glowing angry arcs across the pointed claws of the gauntlets that shuddered angrily. Sora ran in a curved path around the armor while it was distracted with the duck, and took the opportunity to strike its back, its greaves, anywhere she could reach. Just as she did with the behemoth on the play island.

For a moment she wondered at how the duck's lightning spell worked with the metal, and how her keyblade, also looking to be made of mostly metal, didn't conduct the electricity and spark her since her skin was touching the hilt. Sora figured that was part of how magic worked, since she noticed the dog's shield didn't conduct the electricity either. She quickly shoved that thought to the back of her mind with all the rest, as the armor began to move again.

The chest plate and graves stayed relatively stationery, and Sora could see the small slices she'd left in it with the keyblade seep out black smoke. Darkness. And then, she could hear the duck quack angrily as the gauntlets started circling rapidly around the main body as he was smacked back onto his hindquarters.

Sora was safely out of reach for the heartless, but the dog wasn't, and he yelped as the gauntlets collided with his shield again and again. The duck raised his staff from his spot on the ground, and out of it launched a fireball headed straight for the gauntlets.

It collided, leaving a nearly molten spot in the claws that glowed bright red, and the gauntlets stopped spinning as they instead disconnected from the main body and floated straight for the duck.

Both Sora and the dog ran over to help, striking wherever they could, with more of those scrapes that seeped Darkness forming in the armor's pieces as they did so. And as one greave finally faded away into smoke, it gave Sora an idea.

"Guys!" She called out to them, and they both looked to her for a moment. "Let's target one at a time, it'll be faster to work on it in pieces!"

"You're right!" The dog shouted.

"Left leg first!" The duck commanded, and they all turned to the remaining greave stomping on the pavement, leaving small cracks and forming shockwaves as it did so.

The dog raised his shield, the duck doing the same with his staff, and Sora matched them with her keyblade before they charged. The greave shuffled back somewhat and then flung itself to try and kick them, but it was no match for the shield. The duck cast some sort of ice spell with an unintelligible shout, judging by the wave of frost that spread over the greave and bonded it to the pavement so that it couldn't move. It wasn't long before Sora made short work of the grieve, and it crumbled to Dark dust with a few more slashes of the keyblade.

"Right hand!" The duck ordered, and while Sora could barely make out what he was saying she understood when she saw them heading for the gauntlet. It raised its fingers madly, almost tauntingly, before it joined with its mate and began to try and circle again. Sora wouldn't have it.

She thrusted the keyblade upwards in attempt to wrench the gauntlet out of its motions forcefully, and it worked. Metal and metal collided with an ear-splitting gong noise that Sora could feel echo through her bones.

"Good thinking, hyuck!" The dog cheered as he brought down the sharper edge of his shield onto one of the gauntlets forcefully. It dissipated as he did so, ending the threat of the circling move it had done with the other. That left only one gauntlet and the middle piece.

The remaining gauntlet vanished soon after the duck started casting a barrage of spells on it, lightning and fire alternating out of his staff. Thereafter, the chestplate rose up, almost out of reach, and tried to circle around.

"Oh no you don't!" Sora shouted at it and followed. She could see the Dark smoke seeping out of its wounds that it sustained, how its movements were slower and clumsier, and Sora knew it didn't have much strength left. If she could just land one good hit, it'd be done for.

Adrenaline gave her one last burst of speed, her injuries from this fight and earlier ones going silent as it did so, and Sora gave a running leap. And at the zenith of her jump, her keyblade outstretched, Sora did it.

The teeth of the keyblade tore into the chest plate with a screeching noise, starbursts and sparks angrily sputtering out of the weapon, and the metal started to collapse in on itself. The helmet rolled off and would have squashed Sora, if the dog hadn't managed to reach her at the last moment and raised his shield against the helmet with one last clanging noise as it collided and fell to the ground. The now mostly collapsed chest plate gave one last rumble and a great burst of light shot out of it, from which a glimmering heart spiraled towards the sky with a chime.

The remaining pieces of armor grew still, and finally dissolved, along with the barriers that rose at the beginning of the fight.

The trio stared after where the heart-shaped gleam went, heaving with exhaustion, and Sora wiped her forehead. The scene that she saw earlier came to mind again.

If that man that collapsed made one of the smaller heartless, she really didn't want to see what sort of being made _that._

"Not too shabby, kid." Yuffie called out, and Sora looked over to see her and Leon having watched the whole thing.

"I told you," Sora started, and then decided to let it go. "Ah, forget it. I didn't beat it by myself, these guys came in and helped me out. Who are you, anyways?" She asked and looked to the duck and the dog.

"I'm Donald Duck, royal magician!" The duck proudly gestured to himself with his staff.

Next the dog spoke up, raising his shield in a wave. "I'm Goofy! And we've been looking for you!"

Those were certainly apt names, Sora thought, but didn't say it aloud.

"You were looking for me?"

They both nodded, and she turned to see Yuffie and Leon having come down to join them.

"They too have been seeking the wielder of the keyblade." Leon informed.

Yuffie spoke up. "We were going to introduce you three to each other earlier, but obviously we got a little sidetracked."

"Hey, why don't you come with us?" Goofy suggested, "We heard you were trying to journey to other worlds. We can go to other worlds on our vessel!"

Sora could feel the corners of her mouth turn up, and then turn downward as she thought about it.

"I wonder if I can find Riku and Kairi," She wondered, "And my mom."

"Of course!" Goofy said, and Sora looked to Leon and Yuffie hoping for some kind of advice.

"Sora, go with them." Leon advised, and Yuffie nodded with an encouraging smile. "Especially if you want to find them."

"Yeah, okay." She replied and could feel her shoulders start to unclench. There was a path she could take now, she considered, an idea of what to do. It was always easier to work with direction.

But Sora could feel the tension still in her face. Could she do it? That fight went easier with them by her side, but Sora wasn't sure if she could keep doing it forever. Her ears still rang, her arms and legs wearier than they'd ever been with so many fights in such a short time, and her head still hurt from where Yuffie got her. Every little pain was starting to come back the longer she stood still.

And there was the matter of her mom, her friends. Needing to find those reports so she could find a way to bring back her world.

' _So much to do, so little time.'_ The voice said to her in that dream just yesterday. It felt like a lifetime ago. But the voice had turned out entirely right. Sora sighed.

Donald angled his head.

"But you can't come along looking like that. Understand?" He spoke, wagging a feathered finger.

"No frowning, no sad face." He smiled. "Okay?"

"Yeah! You gotta look funny, like us!" Goofy chuckled, and Donald quickly shoved him aside.

"The gummi ship runs on happy faces." Donald finished with a quick glare at Goofy.

There was a silence for a moment as they all waited for her to respond.

"Happy?" She said, still looking down. The corners of her lips twitched, but she held her solemn demeanor as best she could.

Sora loved making outlandish faces back on the play island. She had an entire collection of them, depending on how badly she wanted to make Riku and Kairi laugh. And much more often than not, all of them worked well. Sometimes she even got into contests with her mom on making them, and they'd both cross eyes at each other in consecutively crazier and crazier expressions until neither of them could hold it in anymore and they would both crack up. That particular apple hadn't fallen far from the tree.

She decided to go with an exceptionally foolproof expression. Sora pulled her chin in against her neck, angled the corners of her lips upward while biting down on the bottom lip to keep it in place, and crossed her eyes as far as they could possibly go. It was the one that made Riku always crack at least a smile even on his worst days.

"Like… _This?_ " Sora asked and looked up at them.

She felt a thrill when everyone busted out laughing. Even Leon, with his unflappable demeanor, smiled at it.

"Atta girl!" Yuffie cheered through guffaws.

"That's one funny face!" Goofy laughed, amidst Donald's squawking laughter.

Sora smoothed her expression back out and looked to them happily.

"Okay. Why not?" She said. "I'll go with you guys."

"Good! And remember, along with 'no sad faces'," Goofy put a hand out, and Donald placed his hand on top of it. "All for one…"

"…And one for all!" Donald cheered, and Sora put her hand on top.

The night air was quiet with the heartless gone, but it buzzed pleasantly with their cheers.

Sora looked to them both with a smile, a real one, and for the first time that day she didn't feel quite so alone.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

The first thing she heard was the sound of waves.

Kairi groaned against the bright sunlight that managed to blind her even through her still closed eyelids. She sleepily pushed herself upright, holding a hand against her head. She realized quickly that her hand was gritty with sand. Kairi next realized that her headache was gone, and that the weight at the edge of her senses was gone with it. Everything felt normal again.

She opened her eyes.

It was the second time in Kairi's life that she had woken up on the shores of Destiny Islands. But this time, she was on the play island.

And this time, Riku and Sora were gone.

* * *

YOU PROBABLY THOUGHT I WAS GONNA LEAVE KAIRI OUT OF THE FUN UNTIL THE VERY END FOR THIS GAME, DIDN'T YA. ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)✧

See, the best part about DDD (beyond the gobs of precious Soriku fuel it gave us) is that it gave us Sora's Heartscape. Or at least that's gonna be my word for it since they didn't provide any beyond just saying it was his Heart. Remember how Roxas, Xion, and Ventus were all there at the play island at the end when Riku came in?

Yep. So that would logically mean Kairi spent some time there too in KH1, even if canon never really acknowledges that.

For this game's novelization I'm just filling in canon's blanks here as to how she may have felt about waking up on the play island again after what happened, but I'm also kind of maybe throwing in my own ideas based off of how we see her phase in and out of places in KH1 too. I'm 99% going to work off of canon's implications and 1% doing some small things based off of what I imagine she could be able to do both as an undamaged Heart merely outside of her body *and* as a Princess of Heart (since canon keeps it very nebulous as to what they're able to do, exactly).

And if you guessed one those small things was acting as the Greek chorus for KH1's arc until she's safely out at the end, you might be right ( ͡° ͜ ʖ ͡° )

As for Riku...well. The CoM novel mentioned that he'd believed at one point that maybe Maleficent really did care for him, specifically mentioning 'like a son', so as you can see I kinda took that and ran to the ends of the earth with it. Especially with the last chapter (Sorry about that). I mean, I am basically going off of canon's implications for this whole thing, and canon seems to imply that Riku felt at least a little bit of loneliness on the familial front. That, and what sort of a kid would be so focused on building a raft to get off of a tropical paradise in the first place? It'd be one thing if it were just an idea, but Riku was pretty drilled down on it. Canon doesn't really explain much of Riku's side of things, and it never really does go much into why he fell to the Darkness and *how* he started working with Maleficent in the first place. Soooo, until canon comes and retroactively explains everything as it is wont to do, I'm running with the implications.

Notes:  
1\. In the final mix manga for KH1, Riku really does say "I should have tried that paopu thing" when he first wakes up in Hollow Bastion. That's not me, it's canon!

2\. I was half tempted to bring in old timey fairy rules with Maleficent, particularly with the 'never give them your name' rules, but I won't. I just decided to throw in a sneaky reference to them instead here, it's not going to come up again.

3\. 'A pound of flesh' is an archaic phrase that means a ridiculously steep (yet still legal) price paid for something-i.e., not paid for with money. It's usually used in reference to deals with the devil!

4\. I made Yuffie be the fight you pass out on here because I thought it would be really neat if you could choose to fight either her or Leon depending on what district you wandered into. This is honestly the biggest departure from canon events that I'm going to do, outside of B-plots (which are going to work in more as building on canon, in comparison) so don't worry about if this'll be a pattern, it won't!

5\. Oh, also, Leon's kind of a jerk in the beginning of KH1. Seriously, he's way nicer in the novel and manga, but in the game when Sora's wondering "What happened to my home? My island? Riku? Kairi?" Leon's tone when he says "You know what? I really don't know." sounds a lot more like he means "I really don't care." Which...doesn't seem very nice. Especially for this being the same guy that asks you to painstakingly find all 101 dalmations across the worlds. And especially for this being the same guy that we later on find out lost everything in the fall of Hollow Bastion, just as we thought Sora did in KH1 with the fall of Destiny Islands. So I gave him a little more empathy and kept him more in line with his novel/manga characterization.


	4. Chapter 3: A Grin Without a Cat

**KAIRI**

She blinked once. Twice.

"Am I hallucinating?" She asked the empty island.

There was no response, not that Kairi expected any. It seemed that the play island was devoid of anyone else around entirely, not only Sora and Riku. The air echoed with the tides, but there was no distant shouting of the rest of the play island crew. And, she realized with a shiver, there was no familiar calls of birds or insects either. Beyond the tide, there was no noise around except for her.

"Sora?" Kairi yelled, not expecting an answer but hoping for something. Anything other than this silence. "Riku?"

She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled as loud as she could.

" _Anyone?!_ "

But nobody responded.

Kairi walked from one end of the play island to the other, starting from where the shoddily built scaffolding was to the far side of the island where her friends raced all the time. She checked the shack, the bridge, all the way to the small island with the bowed palm that Riku sat on so often. And the entire time she called for her friends, for anyone, yet there was no response.

Another strange detail she noticed, beyond the lack of chirruping from birds or insects, was that the main island was absent from the horizon. There was nothing Kairi could see beyond the waves except for the constant line where sea met sky. The sun was high above, with all the splendor of noon, but it didn't give the almost overbearing temperature she'd expect from this time of day beyond a pleasant warmth. Nor did the air have any humidity. She saw that the sand was the same shade of white, but not _too_ white, so that it didn't blind you as it often did at this hour.

And finally, there wasn't any wind. Not even a breeze.

The play island was flawless.

This had to be a dream.

That was it, Kairi decided. This was just some weird, screwed up dream—because she _saw_ that storm, there would have to have at least been some evidence of it in the form of broken palm fronds and windswept leaves if this were real. There would be their home island on the horizon and she would hear at least insects, there were always cicadas here somewhere. It would explain why this play island was so…perfect. Almost eerily so.

 _Alright_ , she thinks, _I am going to wake up now._

And she tries.

It works, but not quite. It's like her body is moving of its own volition, and she's watching it from the third person.

 _Kairi's walking on a cobblestone road somewhere that is lit mostly by a combination of crooked streetlamps, string lights, and the glow from storefront signs and windows. On her shoulders is an awkward metal weight she can't really see well enough to identify what it is. Unruly tufts of brown hair kept falling in her eyes—_ Wait a minute, Kairi had red hair.

She checked herself on the play island again. Still red. What was she seeing?

 _Kairi can hear the surrounding babble of several people talking. One is speaking in a guttural, squawking tone that is nearly unintelligible, but their companion, who speaks in weird rounded syllables, seems to hear and respond to him just fine. Up ahead is a man with a scarred face holding a weapon that is a cross between a sword and a gun, rolling his eyes at a girl not much older than her who has a giant shuriken strapped to her back. Immediately beside her is a woman with green eyes and brown hair, telling her about a place that she used to live in with the others._

" _I don't remember too much of it, but I remember it was beautiful." She starts, "There were blooms everywhere in the city when spring came, window-boxes and hanging planters and trellises that would stretch up the sides of entire buildings. I remember the bakery down the street from our house had a wisteria crawling up its side, and all through spring and summer there was practically a carpet of the blooms."_

 _She continued, "I worked as an apprentice for one of the city gardeners. My main talent was flowers." She smiled. "But I wanted to work in the palace gardens. That was where a lot of the masters worked at."_

" _What was the palace like?"_

Hold on. That sounded like Sora's voice.

She checked the appearance of this other self she was seeing. Brown hair that was always askew, bright blindingly red swim shorts and shirt that Kairi had seen many a day on the play island when they were working on the raft…

She _was_ Sora. Sort of. It was like she was seeing whatever Sora saw, hearing what she heard.

Well that helped explain why it was like she was watching herself in the third person—she quite literally was. Perhaps not watching herself, but Sora. Kairi decided she'd think on the implications of that in a moment in favor of trying to get back to her own body, maybe she just had to try a little harder with waking up this time.

So she did.

And it finally worked.

Kairi found herself back in _her_ body this time, not someone else's, but the instant she tried to get up from where she was slumped against the wall Kairi realized something was horribly wrong.

She couldn't move. Not even a finger.

Why couldn't Kairi move?

The only thing she could manage, barely, was shifting her eyes. Kairi would have started hyperventilating if she could control her lungs.

As it was, she could feel her Heart clench with panic and it made her unconsciously withdraw right back into the dream play island again. Kairi savored the feeling of being able to move again, and used it to feel the sand, the rim of her shoes, anything physical to keep her grounded. Or not physical, she couldn't actually _grab_ anything in the physical world apparently, but this dream world was realistic enough to suffice. The air was blissfully soothing on her skin.

Kairi drew her arms and legs into herself and breathed in, out, for several minutes on the shore. _Don't be stupid, Kairi._ She admonished herself. _Panicking won't help solve anything. Try again._

And it still doesn't work. She steels herself against the fear this time long enough to try looking around and figuring out where she was.

The first thing she noticed was that it was dark, and outdoors. It didn't look like anywhere on Destiny Islands that she knew of, with its mortar walls in wood framing.

It looked to be that Kairi was leaning against a wall that was sloppily constructed of scraps of wood. Through the tiny slits in between boards, she could see the distant glow of streetlights and lights strung up from building to building. Piled high around her were wooden crates and barrels, and the side of the wooden wall she was on looked to be abandoned. She still couldn't move anything but her eyes.

Well, then.

Kairi supposed the best she could hope for was that it didn't rain before someone found her.

She went back to the island again. Kairi was still very disturbed from her real body being unresponsive, but she had to keep it together. Breakdowns don't solve crises, they didn't even help to make you feel better. All they achieved was making you collapse inward like a dying star.

And Kairi had experience with _that_ feeling every time spring came to the real Destiny Islands.

Finally, she got an idea. If she could hear Sora, and see through her…could Sora hear Kairi? Could the situation go both ways?

Kairi closed her eyes.

" _It was beautiful. The pictures you see in storybooks of castles in fairy tales…it was like this place was the inspiration for all of them. Waterways that formed canals throughout the city, tamed into fountains and small waterfalls off of parapets, and all along there were flowerbeds everywhere you looked. I heard that the castle gardens were especially breathtaking, but few were allowed in them beyond the castle's personnel and the royal family—"_

"Hey, Sora?" She tried. "Can you hear me?"

" _Huh?" Sora looked around, but it seemed nobody said anything to her other than Aerith._

That was also interesting, Kairi thought. It seemed the connection went a little beyond observing and extended to some information being exchanged. She had no idea who Aerith was, but it was like they'd already at least been introduced.

" _Everything okay?"_

" _Yeah, I just thought I heard something."_

Maybe she had to be louder?

"HEY, SORA!" Kairi shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth. She might have looked like a lunatic right then, but it wasn't as if anyone else was here on the island with her.

" _There it is again!"_

 _Aerith blinked. "What does it sound like?"_

" _Just like someone trying to talk to me from far off." Sora swung around, the keyblade on her shoulders nearly swiping Donald's hat off, which the duck protested with a huff. "Sorry. Anyways, I can't really hear what they're saying at all, or if I'm even hearing anything for sure."_

Well, there went that idea.

Kairi sighed, and decided to just stay tuned in. Maybe she'd hear something useful, and if nothing else it gave a distraction from her situation. That castle Aerith was describing sounded way too familiar, anyway, even if she couldn't pinpoint how.

* * *

 **SORA**

With no heartless around for the time being, Traverse Town seemed a little more peaceful than before.

The group's walk back to the First District, towards the hangar where Goofy and Donald's gummi ship was parked, was much more relaxed than their tumultuous arrival into the Third District and with none of the fights they had expected. Sora found herself getting startled at some points, when she thought she could register shadows moving out of the corner of her vision, but more often than not it was just Donald or Goofy when she turned to look.

It was on this walk that Sora met Aerith. Aerith was one of those people that you got the sense you could innately trust, that you could pour your soul out to and not be afraid of reproach, and Sora couldn't help but open up to her more than she had to Yuffie and Leon in her first meeting with them.

They talked about Hearts, their homeworlds (or in Aerith's case she shared what little she remembered of it, and many of the details of it sounded strangely familiar to Sora though she couldn't figure out why), what Light and Darkness were, and why it was important to fight the Darkness and avoid its call. And lastly, they talked about the keyblade.

"It's weird." Sora started, resting the weapon across her shoulders and using it awkwardly to hold up her arms. She was wary of dismissing it from her hand entirely, still afraid of it not returning if she needed it, but Sora hadn't yet found a comfortable pose to hold it in outside of battle.

"Hmm?" Aerith said.

"I always wanted to be a hero. Even when we were really little, me and Riku would always play pretend as knights." Sora recalled the childhood games in her mind's eye. "All of this is exciting! I should be excited! And I am, mostly, but not as much as I thought I'd be. I'm a little scared. What if I can't find my mom and my friends? What if I can't figure out a way to fix everything?" She paused, "What if I can't be a hero?"

"You remind me of someone I knew long ago, before we lost our world and arrived in Traverse Town." Aerith gave her a lighthearted glance. "His name was Zack."

"I was thinking the same thing." Leon spoke from his spot at the front of the group.

"Who's Zack?" Yuffie asked the question before Sora could.

"He'd come by the gardens sometimes and flirt with Aerith. You would have been way too young to remember." Leon answered.

Aerith cut in, "My point is, he wanted to be a hero too. Just like you. He'd do play swordfights with other kids, the same sort of things as you. And one day he got serious about it."

The corners of Leon's mouth twitched. "As serious as someone like Zack could be about something."

"Which was still plenty serious!" She asserted. "Zack said he was done just playing pretend and that he was really going to do it. That he was going to be a hero. Zack said he'd found a way off-world and someone to train him, and he left."

Sora lit up. "So he did it? He became a hero?"

"I can't say for sure. We lost our world not long after that, and none of us have seen him since." Aerith pursed her lips at Sora's now downcast demeanor. "Keep in mind we haven't left Traverse Town since arriving though. I know he's still out there somewhere, a full-fledged hero by now, saving people and helping the worlds. Zack was one of those people who, when he got serious about something, you would really believe that he could do it—no, you would _know_ he could do it. He played around often and wasn't usually serious, true, but that made it mean so much more when he _was_ serious. But that's what I see in you: A hero."

She finished, "You're serious about being a hero, I can tell. So I know you will be one. Even if you goof around, or make a mistake, or find you can't achieve everything you set out to do, you can still be a hero regardless of those things, so long as your Heart is in the right place. I know Zack did it, and I know you'll do it too."

Sora stared after her for a moment. "Thank you, Aerith. That means a lot."

"I'm not quite done yet." She smiled playfully and reached into her waist-pouch. "This is from all of us." Aerith handed her five hundred munny and Sora's eyes nearly bugged out of her head as she held it, the keyblade dismissing itself from her hands.

"Don't blow it all at once, 'kay?" Yuffie winked. "I pitched in a little extra to say sorry about clobbering you."

"We wanted to make sure you're prepared for the journey ahead of you." Leon said. "We don't know how far the heartless have spread."

"And be sure to take a breather every once in a while, you can't fight heartless every day." Aerith spoke up.

"If you run into too much trouble, just come back here." Leon reminded the trio. "There'll be at least a few heartless here for as long as the keyhole on this world stays unlocked, but we'll find it for you guys. Until then we'll just keep the heartless at bay here like we have been doing."

"There's nothing to worry about with The Great Ninja Yuffie on the job!"

"Also, kid, I know Yuffie patched you up as best she could, but you still look a little pathetic." Leon sighed, and handed her a small corked vial with blue liquid in it. "Here."

"I…Wow, you guys, I don't know what to say. Thank you." Sora blinked and looked down at the vial. "What's this?"

"An elixir. It'll heal you better than any bandages or medicine. Try to keep stocked up on those."

"Got it. I'll see you all again soon!" She grinned. She turned with Donald and Goofy towards the giant doors that led outside of the town's walls, where the hangar waited. "Let's go, guys!"

Beyond the town's entrance there wasn't much to see. Much of it was only a flat plain of grass that stretched to the horizon, with the exception of an exceptionally large, flat building with a large open archway at one end that spanned the wall. Inside, Sora could see the building was remarkably better lit than the town's streets but still somewhat dimmed, like they hadn't enough resources to light it properly. Several people darted about, one of whom Sora could recognize.

"Cid!" Donald squawked as they got closer, "Don't touch my ship! Only Chip and Dale can work on it!"

"Donald, doesn't the ship technically belong to the— _Yipe!_ " Goofy exclaimed as a small bolt of lightning struck him from Donald's staff.

"Relax, I know gummi ships too." Cid replied, gesturing behind himself. Sora noticed that he looked much more at home in the hangar than he did in the accessory shop. "Mine's just over there."

The ship he was referring to wasn't quite as large as Donald and Goofy's, nor was it as fancy. It looked to sacrifice form in favor of function with its smaller more aerodynamic shape, mismatched shell panels, and five rocket thrusters on the back. Clustered around it were a number of small white creatures with red antennae and small wings.

"What are they?" Sora asked, referring to the beings.

"Moogles." Cid answered, "Clever little guys, but they keep to 'emselves a lot. Always good at tinkering and figuring out tech. They helped the gang out with modernizing Traverse Town out of the stone ages when they landed here after their home, the Jagd Woods, fell."

"Whatever they are, keep them away from my ship when we come back!" Donald opened the hatch and climbed in, with Goofy following.

"Yeah, yeah." Cid rolled his eyes before looking to Sora. "Hey, kid. Make sure that duck throws you a healin' spell every once in a while, alright? You look like you're in a sorry state after fending off those heartless back there."

"Gee, thanks gramps. I got an elixir from Leon, I'm fine."

"And make sure you eat something every once in a while, kid, you can't survive off of potions and elixirs."

Now it was Sora's turn to roll her eyes. "Yes, grandpa."

"Hey! 'Gramps' is bad enough! Save the attitude for fights, got it?"

"Got it!" Sora grinned and finally entered in the hatch after her friends, closing the door behind her. Looking around the ship, her eyes widened.

She had walked in on what appeared to be a combination of an engine room and an entrance hall, where large machinery chugged as it revved up. On the farthest side of the area she saw a ladder leading up to an opening, from which she could hear Donald squabbling over something. Sora couldn't help but dart from one machine to the other, watching as it worked. She had never been in a gummi ship or any other sort of spaceship before, and even the smallest details amazed her.

Sora followed the noise into the cockpit, where Donald was fussing over the controls. It was Goofy that spotted her first.

"Welcome to the gummi ship!" He cheered. "Donald's gonna fly, we're gonna take off soon since we got stocked up on more supplies in town."

"Cool!" Sora brightened as she got an idea. "Can I fly?"

"Absolutely not!" Donald exclaimed. "Anyone else but me piloting is just gonna crash the ship."

"I won't _crash,_ " She protested. Goofy gave her a sympathetic look.

"Why don'tcha try catching a nap? We'll all catch a few z's at some point on the flight, even Donald." He winked conspiratorially. "Half the time I come in and find him passed out in the chair with the autopilot takin' care of things unless there's heartless. You can have the cabin second from the left, it's just down the hallway."

"Okay," Sora turned, and then turned back when she registered what he said. "Wait, there's heartless? Even in outer space?"

"Sure is! They're pretty easy to deal with, though. Chip and Dale outdid themselves with the newfangled laser thing."

"Weapons system!" Donald corrected him, switching around different levers and buttons as he huffed, "And I do _not_ rely on the autopilot!"

Sora left them to their bickering as she found her new room. The gummi ship as a whole was very well lit, its color palette primarily comprised of lighter neutral tones with the occasional stripe of color to match the outside. The room she had was spare, but clean, with the bed able to be folded into the wall when not in use. Sora could spy that other foldable panels were on the other walls, presumably also able to fold out into other furniture when in use. In the top corner there was a speaker-box to the P.A. system, and along the top part of the room ran a bright red stripe.

She hadn't realized how exhausted she was from the day's events, because after kicking off her shoes Sora sank right into the bed and almost instantly fell asleep.

And her last thought, before going into a dreamless slumber, was of Riku and Kairi, and how she wished they could see all the things she'd seen today too.

* * *

 **RIKU**

He awoke to something tapping on his nose.

Riku blearily opened his eyes to see the black silhouette that had woken him up was actually a heartless, and he could swear the light from its glowing eyes winked almost teasingly as it kept tapping him on the nose. It was a departure from the normally insectile creatures he knew, who moved in shuddering dances of instinct alone.

This one seemed…almost like a person. Riku couldn't deny that the thought was unsettling.

"I'm _up._ " Riku grumbled as he sat up and swatted the small black claws away. "Let me guess, Maleficent sent you?"

The heartless did nothing in response except to tilt its head slightly, antennae bouncing, before flattening itself into two dimensions and crawling out the crack under his closed bedroom door. He stared after it as his shoulders fell. So much for locking the door.

Riku didn't bother trying to check the time on his phone, his only remnant of the islands besides his clothes and wooden sword. The thing had broken presumably upon arrival here, as it had refused to turn on when he first took it out. Riku presumed that something about the atmosphere here screwed with it. Nor could he very well check the time judging by the sun's light, as it hadn't budged one bit since he arrived either, ensnared in a constant sunset. The only way he had any idea of what time it was in this place was by checking the mechanical clock on the far wall of his bedroom, which told him it was eight-thirty in the morning.

The room itself was remarkably nice, considering how antiquated the citadel appeared. Even though it was bare, with only a bed, a desk and chair, and a row of bookshelves, all of the furniture looked to be thoughtfully carved wood and well made. It wasn't too well lit, the only light coming in from the window, but it was enough to get ready by and read by. Most of the books Maleficent had left in this room—presumably left for him—were dusty old tomes he hadn't bothered to open yet, given he had just arrived the day before. Beside the door his old wooden toy sword was propped against the wall.

Riku's eyes lingered on it.

" _If a shooting star comes this way, I'll protect you. I won't let it come near us."_

" _How are you going to do that?"_

 _The question was logical, but Riku hadn't expected it. Sora had so often taken what he said at face value, never even questioning the older kid's authority in favor of taking his word as law and imitating everything he did. Riku thought for a moment, and his eyes landed on the wooden sword._

 _To a child, the toy sword was so much more than what it truly was. To a child wood was as strong as steel, and as strong as the promise he made on that sword. So as long as he didn't break his promise the sword could never break either, he thought to himself as he grabbed it from its spot in the sand._

" _With this. Maybe this is what we've been practicing for. The real test. We pretend to be knights all the time, so what would be different about this?"_

What would be different, indeed.

Later that night on the way home, he had also promised he'd protect Sora from the dark, too. It was meant more as a joke at the time, but Riku had meant it just the same. Yet it turned out that maybe he didn't really need to protect her from the Dark after all. Maybe just as many monsters strode in the Light.

Riku hoped Maleficent could show him how to forge a keyblade that he could keep his promises with. A keyblade that he could maybe even make a new promise with, to protect Sora and anyone else he cared about from the Light.

He arose from his bed and got ready for the day.

Once he set foot in the chapel of the citadel Riku saw that she and Diablo were giving him amused looks. Riku stepped out of the Dark portal he'd summoned carefully and dismissed it. He wasn't sure he'd be able to get used to the feeling of passing through one.

"What?"

"I know being able to go wherever you please must be delightful, but don't rely on portals over more mundane methods of transportation. Especially for merely traversing the citadel. Need I remind you to be responsible with the Darkness?"

"I'll be fine." Riku spied a platform still sticking out of the ground to form a makeshift table, with a sigil of thorns crowded around a rose in the middle. "Did you have guests?"

"Something like that." Maleficent sighed, and magically made the table recede back into the floor with a wave of her hand. "A potential ally I was hoping to recruit, but it seems our offer wasn't sweet enough for him. Never mind that, though. Today you shall receive a new weapon better suited to you as well as your first assignment."

The undertone of contempt towards the wooden sword he had arrived with wasn't lost on Riku, but he said nothing of it.

"You said you'd help me forge it?"

"Indeed. We'll be able to do it right here and now, in fact." Her lips quirked up at the look on his face. "Oh yes, it'll be easy. All you have to do is imagine its shape as clearly as you can, yield your Darkness—just a little, mind you—and my magic can do the rest. Hold out your hand and try it now."

Riku held out one hand opened upward and closed his eyes.

Just like he had on the islands, when taking its Heart and opening a portal, Riku thought to memories of his home. Memories made so much more distant now within the span of only twenty-four hours and all that had happened within that time. But while the earlier memories may have gone slightly fuzzy, that pain, that fear, that _rage,_ that at the time felt so impotent from being so young, it all stood out so starkly in his Heart. Riku could almost feel the memories Darken his Heart, like a black veil was being draped over his soul, and that veil contorted into the beginnings of a silhouette.

"Good, my child." Maleficent purred. "You purified the ore, now give it structure."

Fear made the silhouette in his head jagged, pointed, and pain solidified it. Two types of anger sculpted the form: One was the quick white-hot bursts of anger that directed the rough edges into three points along the blade's edge, and the other was the patient and planned ice-cold fury that smoothed the other side and made for the beginnings of a recognizable design.

His dreams of being free of the islands, free of his home, the slow sadness and betrayal of days going by where a promise was not kept—the smoothed edges and sharp points began to organize themselves into the shape of a wing. Dark, bat-like, but a wing nonetheless.

And finally, it was Riku's unbroken hope for the future, still there, even now, that added the final touch: A blue-green eye with a catlike slit for a pupil settled at the topmost end of the blade's hilt.

"Marvelous. Truly marvelous." He could hear the smile in her voice. "A work of art. Open your eyes and look."

He does, and his face falls.

It's not a keyblade.

It looks so close to how he saw it in his head, the sharpness of the wing-shaped blade and everything, but it doesn't have the same shape as the keyblade the man on the shore had so many years ago. The keyblade he took an oath on.

Riku had done what he could to keep his end of the oath. He thought he was being good. He was _still_ being good, wasn't he?

" _So long as you have the makings, then through this simple act of taking…Its wielder you shall one day be."_

He'd hoped that day would have been today.

"Are you disappointed?"

"No," Riku shook his head fervently. A simple sword might not have been better than a keyblade, but it was much better than nothing. "Not at all."

"Don't lie to me, child." Maleficent ordered, but her voice was curiously devoid of any ire. Instead, she angled her head just a bit, horns dipping, and Riku got the feeling that she was looking straight through him into his soul again. "You wished this would be a keyblade, didn't you?"

His Heart felt like it was climbing into his throat.

"What?"

"I could sense the Mark of the Bequeathed on your Heart the second I laid eyes on you." She explained. "I don't know who gave it to you, but I can still sense it there even now, though it is quite weak. Unfortunately, dear child, I cannot forge you a keyblade. Such a thing is beyond even my powers." Maleficent's gaze took on a roguish gleam then. "But I could teach you how to reform the one you have into a more suitable look, if you were to ever procure one."

"How would I do that?"

"I know that there is currently only one in existence, though to my knowledge there were many in a bygone era. I do not know where the rest have gone, but I have seen the one remaining with my own eyes."

"Do you know who has it?"

"A girl."

Riku could feel the blood drain from his face.

Maleficent continued, "A trifling little thing, really. Hardly fit to be a keyblade master. It would suit you much better, my dear."

"I…I don't know…"

His old doubts came up again, just the same as when the hooded figure was trying to convince him to take the Heart of Destiny Islands. A voice in his head telling him _No. Stop. This is wrong._

"But dear," Maleficent crooned, "You wanted a keyblade, yes?" She swept around the now-sunken platform to put a hand around his shoulders and squeezed. Riku could see her nails were painted as red as her lips. She continued to speak, and Riku could feel Diablo's eyes on the back of his head.

"If you want something, why not take it?"

* * *

 **SORA**

Sora woke up to the ship lurching so hard she nearly fell out of bed.

As it was, she awkwardly tumbled halfway to the floor, throwing her arms out to catch herself at the last moment. The incident made her remember every last injury she sustained in the fighting yesterday, and Sora groaned as her head hurt while thinking back to Yuffie's shuriken hitting her twice. It was then that she remembered the elixir the Traverse Town crew gave her, and Sora fished it out of her pocket.

The vial was small and bright electric blue. A shade of blue that made Sora think more of old broken computer screens than any shade found in nature. It didn't seem likely that it would work, but Sora had seen far stranger things just yesterday, and she uncorked the bottle and tried it.

The first thing she was aware of was that it felt as if her entire body had fallen asleep and was waking up. Like that feeling where you have your arm or leg awkwardly angled and you can feel it go numb and trying to move it sets off the sensation of pins and needles. Such was what Sora felt now: pins and needles everywhere, especially in the spots where she'd gotten hurt, but in some other spots where older injuries had long since happened and healed. She could feel her foreleg's already healed fracture from a stunt gone wrong years back improve to the point where it was as if it never happened, and scars up and down herself from spars, stunts, and various accidents turned white, then silvery pink, and faded entirely.

The next thing Sora was aware of was that the elixir tasted _exactly_ like her mother's pancakes. But it didn't make any sense considering the taste came out of a bottle. Beyond the scars fading and her feeling better than she'd ever felt in her life, the pancakes flavor was what surprised her most. She didn't think magic or potions or anything could accomplish that.

Sora walked to the cockpit after getting ready for the day, hoping the ship didn't lurch again and throw her off balance. In it, Donald had already started his squabbling for the day, muttering and yelling in equally jumbled words as he fiddled with the controls. She could start to make out a few things here and there, and from what she could tell the duck was complaining about the heartless ships that were visible through the windows.

"Buckle up!" Donald ordered without even looking at her, keeping his face glued to the battle the gummi ship was caught up in against the enemy ships. "Confounded heartless! Why I oughta-!"

"We're 'bout to land, ahyup!" Goofy cheerfully said as Sora took the remaining seat.

"Where are we going?"

"Wonderland!" A new voice answered. Sora looked around, trying to find the source, before it called again and was revealed to be a smartly dressed bug standing on Goofy's armrest. "Down here! My apologies for not getting the chance to introduce myself properly earlier on. My name is Jiminy Cricket, and I'm coming along on your quest as royal chronicler by orders of Queen Minnie!" He finished, sticking out one tiny gloved hand for Sora to shake.

"Nice to meet ya," She said, gingerly shaking his hand with her thumb and forefinger. "Are you going to be okay up against the heartless, though?"

"No need to worry about that." Jiminy started climbing up Goofy's sleeve in attempts to reach his own tiny seat that was on the dashboard and was helped halfway up by Goofy picking him up and placing him on his shoulder. Jiminy crawled to the back of Goofy's seat to make a leap to his own. "I'm going to spend most of the time here on the ship, to watch over things. You guys can recount to me what happens on your return."

"Sounds fine by me. What is this Wonderland place, anyway?" She lit up. "Is it a whole world?"

"Ahyup!" Goofy nodded. "Sensors woke us up when they went off a few minutes ago for heartless presence, so we're gonna go check it out and see what's goin' on. Donald's trying 'ta land us on its surface now!"

"I'm _trying_ to, if you could let me focus for one minute, ya big palooka!"

The ship's engine began to rev up as Donald tried to angle it onto a grassy field on the world's surface. The sky went from starry black, to blue, and bluer still as clouds began to be visible. Finally, the ship gave one last quake as it landed, and the engine turned off.

The trio walked out, Jiminy staying behind as he'd mentioned, and they found that everything was huge. Trees stretched on to nearly infinity until their branches skimmed the sky, and even blades of grass rose around them like skyscrapers.

"This. Is. Nuts." Sora gaped at their surroundings.

"I guess we're seeing what Jiminy sees. No heartless around here, though." Goofy pushed aside some grass and pointed towards way over with his shield hand, where a cave-like hole gaped open at the base of a tree. "Let's try there!"

"Good idea," Donald gripped his staff. "Heartless like dark places."

The trio entered the cave, and the strangest thing happened: It was as if the cave got smaller the farther they walked in it. The ceiling that seemed miles above before was now only a few feet away.

"Am I going crazy or is this cave getting smaller?" Sora asked.

"Sure is, ahyuk! Haven't seen any heartless yet, though— _A-hyoooooohooohooo!_ " Goofy yelped as he tried to step out onto air and fell down a previously unseen hole. Sora ran after him and quickly fell down the same hole.

"Goofy? Goofy, did you find someth—Woah!"

Donald stamped one webbed foot at his companions.

"As if one wasn't bad enough, now I got two of them bumbling around to deal with?" He shook his head and jumped down the hole after them. "Wait for me!"

The fall was fast at first and slowed down significantly. Sora saw the rock walls smooth into painted walls just like ones you'd find inside a house, but with what looked like two-dimensional drawings of household objects plastered throughout: A clock, a bedside table, a lamp. She grinned at the feeling and decided to dismiss her keyblade for the moment, instead deciding to do somersaults in the air. Beside her, Donald unsteadily tried flapping his arms to stay upright, with Goofy reclining leisurely as they levitated down.

Sora and Donald landed on their feet, while Goofy was gently lowered down onto his back, still in the reclining pose. Which was quickly interrupted as a furry foot walked across his stomach.

It belonged to a white rabbit. A white rabbit which was looking quite dapper in his three-piece suit, though harried, as it kept one eye on a ticking pocket watch it carried in its hand and the other on the path ahead of him. He stepped off of Goofy as easily as if he weren't there and sped down the hallway they landed in.

"Oh, my fur and whiskers!" The rabbit cried, "I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!"

The three looked after him with inquisitive looks as they saw him disappear out of sight, though they could hear his yelling echo through the corridor.

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! I'm here, I should be there. Ooh, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late! The queen, she'll have my head for sure!"

"Being late can't be that bad, why's he freaking out so much?" Sora asked.

"Guess it's up to us to find out." Donald replied. Sora noticed she was getting better at discerning what he was saying.

The hallway they followed was winding, turning, with brick walls melding into plaster and melding again into wood paneling. Two-dimensional furniture was painted along the walls and floors, with the occasional real furniture such as shelves and wall votives here and there. At the end of the hallway was a door, which Sora opened, to reveal another door, and another, and another. Each one was progressively smaller than the last, but Sora was still able to stand to full height along with Donald as she led the way through the smallest door, with Goofy having to lean over some.

The second she walked through Sora was hit with a wave of déjà vu. The entire room looked so familiar, but she knew for a fact she had never been here before.

She knew what she'd see before she even looked around all the way: Two-dimensional and three-dimensional furniture in a cartoon room, with the giant stone stove being over there, the weird misplaced faucet high up on one wall, with a bed in the corner. On all sides, different paintings peppered the walls with a variety of scenes and silhouettes.

And then she remembered: the dreams. The dreams Sora would have for months over the past year, before the islands fell, she'd have adventures with companions not unlike the ones she had now. Sora had walked in this exact room before, even, she knew it without a doubt. And she had some ideas as to what other sorts of rooms she'd find around here.

Underfoot, the white rabbit hurried through the room, and they realized with a start that the rabbit—which was of at least somewhat comparable size before, was now quite tiny. He hurried on through the room and a tiny door on the other end was already open and waiting for him. As the white rabbit scurried through the door closed without any help.

Sora didn't remember this part of the dream. She mostly only remembered fighting in here. She squatted down and peered at the tiny door, and Sora could see the doorknob on it had a face that looked to be still asleep.

"How did he get so small?"

The doorknob groggily cracked open one eye. "No, you're simply too big." He spoke, and she saw that his mouth formed the door's keyhole.

All three of them jumped back with a start at this.

Donald cried, "It talks!"

The doorknob yawned.

"Must you be so loud? You woke me up."

"Good morning!" Goofy greeted it. It seemed he wasn't too perturbed by the notion of a talking doorknob, compared to Sora and Donald.

"Good night!" The doorknob retorted, "I need a bit more sleep."

Sora had to act fast before it fell asleep to the point even they couldn't wake it up.

"Wait!" She cried. "What do we have to do to grow small?"

"Why don't you try the bottle over there?" The doorknob gestured with its bulbous nose over their shoulders, and Sora turned to see the previously two-dimensional table and chair rise out of the ground with a sparkling cloud, the table replete with two small bottles on top.

Sora could only blink at it.

"Okay, I was wrong earlier. _This_ is nuts." A talking doorknob? Furniture that swapped between dimensions?

Donald went over and looked at the labels of the bottles. "This one's to get bigger," He said, raising the red one. "And this one's to become smaller." And then he raised the blue one.

"Sure makes it easy, ahyup!"

They passed around the blue bottle, each of them disappearing in a similarly glittering fog and reappearing on the table at a vastly smaller size.

Goofy had a thoughtful expression. "Tasted like…cherry-tart, custard, pineapple, roast turkey, toffy, toast…"

Sora thought he wasn't wrong, but Donald scoffed.

"Don't be silly, that didn't taste like anything!"

"'Don't be silly', you say, but you're silly to delay. Tarry too much or you'll rue the day!"

The three looked around. Nobody other than them was in the room.

"Who was that?" Sora asked them. She checked behind them. "One of you?"

"One of me, and three of thee." A disembodied grin appeared on top of the red bottle, and a cat slowly came into view. "Hearts and Hearts abound, I see."

"Hearts?" She asked him. "Hey, have you seen any heartless around here?" She saw Donald whip his head to her out of the corner of her eye, but she ignored it.

"Shadows many, but one heartless queen." He turned his head slightly in a way that looked somewhat unnatural, and his grin never abated. "If you're looking for her then seek the court's green."

"Thanks!" Sora hopped off the edge of the table onto the chair's seat, and Goofy followed.

"Who are you?" She could hear Donald ask.

"Very well, I suppose, but you've no time to chat. You may call me the Cheshire Cat."

The second Sora and her companions made it off the chair and onto the floor, heartless erupted to fight them. Sora kept running, remembering the cat's words, but tried her best to defeat any persistent ones along the way as she remembered Yuffie's words too.

Thankfully the heartless were quickly taken care of with the help of her friends, and they dissipated much faster than they had when she was alone in Traverse Town. Eventually, the three came upon the doorknob again, but this time it was asleep, and locked. Sora briefly considered trying her keyblade on it, to see if it could actually function as a regular key, but Donald called her over to the adjacent corner of the room.

"There's another entrance over here behind the bed! We'll have to crawl maybe, but we'll make it."

"I hope it leads to where the cat pointed out."

It didn't take much to go through, the three of them were able to push the bed aside enough to make a wide enough entrance to the hole and walk through it. And through a small dark tunnel they came out onto what looked to be just as the cat specified: A courtroom adapted for the outdoors in a field of cartoonishly shaped topiary as far as the eye could see, like a green labyrinth. And beyond the heart-shaped archways just in front of the trio sat a grumpy older woman in royal garb, high on a dais and who looked to be presiding over the court. All around on either side stood men with odd playing-card anatomy, more card than human, who crossed spears shaped like their respective card suits. The white rabbit scrambled up the last few steps of his podium before trilling the small horn he held.

"Court is now in session!" The white rabbit heaved; he looked exhausted from his run. "Her majesty, the Queen of Hearts, presiding!"

"I'm on trial! But why?" A girl protested from the defendant platform. Sora could see she was close in age to her, if perhaps a little younger. But her outfit was much simpler than Sora's, consisting of a blue dress and a white apron, with her blonde hair secured with a black bow headband.

"This girl is the culprit. There's no doubt about it." She boomed, sweeping a red scepter with a heart -shaped topper at the end and shoving it towards the girl. "And the reason is because I say so, that'swhy!"

"That is so unfair!"

The queen gave the girl a mean look that made her appear quite like a bulldog. "Well, have you anything to say in your defense beyond 'unfairness'?"

"Of course!" The girl crossed her arms stubbornly. "I've done absolutely nothing wrong. I wasn't even there when it happened! You may be queen, but that doesn't give you the right to be so _mean!_ "

"Silence!" The queen pounded her arms against the table of the dais, her voice resounding through the green. "You dare defy me?"

Nobody spoke as the queen continued to yell. Sora could see the white rabbit nervously looking from the girl to the queen, waiting to see if the defendant would protest the matter further, and she was secretly hoping she would. This trial, and the queen's behavior, seemed absurd.

"The court finds the defendant guilty as charged! For the crimes of assault and attempted theft of my Heart, _off with her head!_ "

Sora didn't have to see the girl's face to notice her demeanor sinking, and the queen's words—attempted theft of her Heart, she mentioned—made Sora gasp. There was no way this girl could have stolen a Heart, but the trio had a pretty good idea as to the real culprit.

"Hey, guys, we have got to help her out." Sora said.

"Yeah," Donald started, "But the…" he trailed off, but Goofy filled in.

"We're outsiders, so wouldn't that be muddling?"

"'Meddling'!"

"Oh yeah," Goofy glanced to Donald, "And that's against the rules."

"You already blabbed to the Cheshire Cat about the heartless earlier, too much meddling and we'll risk upending the world order!"

"Okay," Sora kicked her toe against the ground. "Maybe I did kinda say too much, but he definitely already knew what we were talking about!"

"He sure did seem to know a lot, ahyuk."

"See? Goofy gets it! And if the world order for this place includes watching a girl get beheaded for a crime she didn't commit, and we know who did it, then to heck with the world order!"

"No! No!" The girl pleaded as the card soldiers began to arrange themselves in formation and approached her. "Please!"

"That's it," Sora growled as she summoned her keyblade and rushed in. "Hold it right there!"

"This will _not_ go well." Donald muttered, but kept his staff at the ready and followed anyway.

"Who are you?" The queen peered down at them. "How dare you interfere with my court!"

"E-Excuse me," Sora lost some of her bravado at the queen's steely eye being turned onto her and all the severity that came with it, but she stiffened her hold on her keyblade. She had to do the right thing. "But we know who the real culprit is!"

"Uh-huh," Goofy supplied, "It's the heartle—" He realized his mistake in time at Donald's furious glance, and forcefully closed his mouth with both hands, his shield tinkling against the zippers on his clothes.

"Anyway, she's not the one you're looking for." She pointed to the girl.

The queen held her head in one hand and impatiently tapped the table of her dais with her scepter. She looked between the three, and Sora resisted the urge to squirm.

"That's nonsense." But her expression belied her intrigue. "Have you any proof?"

"I, uh, well…"

"Not yet!" Donald spoke up.

"Wait, Donald, you're going along with me on this?" Sora's eyes widened.

"Maybe you're right just this once!" He squawked at her. "But don't expect me to just roll with it when it happens again." With this, he turned back to the queen. "We'll bring you proof, your majesty!"

"Very well!" She barked at the trio. "I declare a short recess of the court for two hours until these buffoons come trotting back with some evidence of Alice's innocence. Where is my herald?!" The white rabbit scrambled at the command and shakily rose his hand. "Fetch the duchess, I have a round of croquet to get back to with her. Tell her it's off with her head too if she wins again. Card soldiers: imprison Alice in the defendant cage for the duration of the recess until they come back." She looked between the three with a final warning. "Fail, and it's off with all your heads!"

With this both the queen and the rabbit went away, and the card soldiers moved in to forcefully shuffle Alice to the curtained cage. Sora tried to intervene but she and Donald and Goofy were surrounded quickly on all sides by the cards forming a circle, and by the time they moved it was already done.

The cage swung shut with a metallic clamor, and Alice rushed to grip the bars of the cage fearfully. The card soldiers organized themselves according to numerical order in their suits and most left shortly thereafter, with only a couple remaining to keep guard. Sora and her friends ran to the cage.

"Who are you?" Alice asked.

"I'm Sora."

"I'm Goofy, and that there's Donald!"

"I'm pleased to meet you three," Alice smiled, but it didn't last. "Though I do wish it were under better circumstances. I'm sorry to get you all caught up in this strange trial."

"You're only on trial 'cuz she won't listen to sense." Sora huffed. "We know you couldn't have taken her heart."

"Precisely! She decided I was guilty the moment she saw me, but I'd never seen her before then!"

"That's absurd!" Donald stamped his foot.

"Yeah, we'll find your evidence, don't worry!" Sora promised. Alice smiled again, and this time it lasted.

"Thank you. I hope so."

By now, a nearby card soldier overheard.

"The defendant may not speak to their legal counsel outside the allotted times!"

"But-!"

Any protests were cut off by the card soldier approaching a small tower nearby and turned a lever on it. At once, the cage's curtains drew shut and it skyrocketed to the top of the machine where the pully was, with Alice inside.

With that, the trio raced out of the court green to search for their evidence. And over all, unnoticed and invisible but for the smile across his face, the Cheshire Cat watched.

* * *

 **RIKU**

He stepped out onto a checkerboard tile floor and glanced behind himself to see the Dark portal Maleficent summoned for him disappear.

The room around him looked quite familiar from his years of bygone dreams of the keyblade. Its cartoonish proportions that never stayed the same for long, furniture that alternated between dimensions, the only thing that he remembered was constant about this place was that it was never constant.

" _So you said you'd give me an assignment?"_

" _That's right." Maleficent confirmed. "Your work today will take place in a world called Wonderland. I had hoped for a companion for you to help on your tasks, but as I mentioned earlier he turned us down."_

" _Who is this guy, anyway?"_

"My, my, but what have we? Is this another interloper I see?"

Riku turned to see a cartoonish cat curled up on the bed grinning at him.

"Cheshire cat. She told me about you."

The cat reclined luxuriously and used the tip of his tail to pick up the top of his head as an impromptu gesture of doffing his hat. "That's my name, don't wear it out. Now what is all the fuss about?"

"Do you know where I can find Alice?"

The Cheshire Cat laughed, "If she were still here I'd have a retort, but the poor girl's a defendant in kangaroo court!"

Riku decided he didn't like this cat much already.

"What the heck is a kangaroo court?" He summoned his sword to his clenched hand with a wave of the Dark. Riku noted with satisfaction how the cat eyed it. "Can't you give me a straight answer?"

"Phrases are like phases: they change so soon! Since language won't work just try the next room."

"Finally. Now which door?"

The Cheshire Cat waved its tail, and its body disappeared with it. All that remained was a curved infuriating smile.

"This door, that door, you are such a bore!" Another wave of its tail and Riku could see the front half of his body returned. The Cheshire Cat snapped his fingers and Riku was engulfed in a sparkling cloud. "Can't a cat have fun anymore? 'Tween you and the queen I'd prefer hellebore."

By the time the dust cleared, he saw that everything was substantially bigger. Or, more accurately, _he_ was much smaller. The cat grinned down at him a smile with mammoth teeth.

"Find a door that matches your size and assure your Darkness isn't reprised. Not yet you'll want the door that sleeps, but rather the archway that the cardsmen keep."

"I…Okay. Thanks." Riku moved to the archway at the corner of the room and looked back one last time. The Cheshire Cat was gone.

 _What did that cat mean with assuring my Darkness isn't reprised?_ Riku shook his head. He was probably just referring to the sword. Figures that a denizen of the Light would encourage against Darkness.

He soon came upon the gardens and their outdoor court. _This must be that kangaroo court he mentioned,_ Riku thinks, but there's no kangaroos in sight. Instead there was the cardsmen, but only a few wandering about in small formations. None of them acknowledged him, but that was what Riku preferred. It could help the mission go over smoother that way.

" _You need to find a girl named Alice. My scrying showed her to be a young girl, slightly younger than you. She wears a blue dress with a white apron and has long blonde hair, with a black headband. Your first objective is to find her and bring her to me."_

" _Alright." Riku looks down at his new blade for a moment. The blue-green eye in the hilt almost glowed in the dim light of the room. "May I ask why?"_

" _She's a Princess of Heart, I am sure of it." Maleficent continued upon seeing his blank look, "Princesses of Heart are beings whose Hearts consist entirely of Light. No Darkness to be found in them whatsoever. There hasn't been much research into why they exist, or how, so they are largely shrouded in mystery. This is primarily due to how rare they are: There is estimated to be only seven of them in existence across all the worlds. But Princesses of Heart are theorized to be capable of bringing Light back to worlds' Hearts and to stem the tide of Darkness across all worlds. Surely you must understand why it is important that we keep them from doing such things."_

" _Right," Riku answered. "Balance."_

" _Balance." Maleficent echoed with a simpering smile._

 _From her shoulder, Diablo gave a long, baleful call._

Riku looked around, but Alice was nowhere in sight. He remembered the cat's words about Alice being a defendant, and this certainly looked like some sort of a courtroom. So where was she?

He looked to the side and saw cardsmen standing as sentries on either side of the entrance he arrived through. Riku took a deep breath and decided to take a risk.

"Hey, can I ask you a question?" He asked the eight of spades to his right. Riku waved a hand in front of the card soldier's face to no response. "Hello? _Hello?_ "

The card soldier looked around.

"Over here." Riku spoke up, and finally the card soldier followed his voice. "Do you know where Alice is?"

"The defendant may not be reached until the legal counsel returns, or until the court recess is adjourned!"

At this, the card soldier returned to his former pose of standing at attention. _Court recess, huh? At least that gives me some time._

But that still didn't quite answer Riku's question of where Alice could be.

That is, until he looked up.

High in the air above the court hung a curtained cage of some sort, and Riku could see it rattle faintly. The arrangement was so odd he didn't doubt for a minute that it must be where Alice was.

"How am I going to get up there?" He murmured to himself.

"How, indeed?"

Riku looked up to the tops of the hedges to see the Cheshire Cat looking down at him.

"You're back? I thought I was too boring for you."

"Boring to hear, interesting to see. I love to watch a Heart's journey."

He gnawed at the inside of his cheek. "Do you know how to get Alice down from there?"

The Cheshire Cat tilted his head unnaturally.

"I'm sure you've noticed already. Not much they can hear, not much they can see. What do _you_ think the solution would be?"

That was true, Riku reasoned. The card soldiers didn't look to have any visible eyes or ears, only noses and mouths. But even so, he still didn't want to risk causing a ruckus and attracting attention. He'd have to be quick.

He looked beyond the outermost hedges to see a small tower with levers coming out of it on the corner of the court. Riku walked towards it. The cage looked to have some sort of a pulley system that kept it up in the air, but there was a card soldier at the foot of the pole. He couldn't risk lowering it entirely and having the guard notice.

Riku looked around the court and spied the judge's dais. It came up to about halfway down the pulley for the cage, and high enough that maybe he could expect for the guard not to notice. Perfect. He could try leaping onto it from the edge of the winding staircase up the side platform and not have to make a Dark portal like Maleficent warned against.

Riku dismissed his sword so he'd have both hands free and made his way to the tower, quickly pulling at the lever just enough to make the cage be reachable from the dais. The clicking sound of it made him nervous, but the guards didn't do anything beyond the closest ones moving their heads some.

After that he quietly shuffled to the staircase, the guards meandering about down below it. He took off his gloves and put them in his pockets for a better grip. Once Riku got to the highest step, to the edge, he lunged.

He remembered being back on the play island, when he and Sora were racing along those platforms and trying to leap to each one. When he was younger it was almost impossible to make the next platform, and more than once he and Sora would end up with faces full of sand.

The scene is what flashes back in his head now, with the judge's dais coming closer. For one terrifying moment Riku thinks he won't make it, that his plan will fail and he won't succeed at his first task Maleficent assigned him, but then his fingertips grip onto the solid wood and Riku feels nothing but relief.

He wrenches himself up, his fingertips clawing into the wood and threatening to get splinters, and Riku's feet find some small purchase in the indented panels on the sides of the dais. He pulled himself the rest of the way up and can't help but feel a little exhilarated at actually making the jump. It was just like being back on Destiny Islands again, during the good times.

Riku looked down around the court from his new view, and he saw the Cheshire Cat was gone. Down below, card soldiers puttered about, still ignorant to the interloper in their midst. It seemed nobody bothered to come back yet. He remembered the one guard had mentioned a two-hour window, but Riku didn't have any idea of how much time had already passed before he arrived and he didn't want to risk anything.

He turned to the cage, which had by now started rattling more at being lowered. Riku carefully walked across to it and drew back a curtain. And just as he suspected, it was Alice.

"Who are—" She spoke, and quickly quieted when he put a finger to his lips.

"It's okay to talk, just do it quietly." Riku clarified in a whisper. "I don't want to risk anyone overhearing us when I'm trying to break you out."

"That is sensible," Alice murmured. "Goodness, I'm glad to be out of here, you simply have no _idea_ of what happened to me! I was just strolling along, trying to help some friends paint roses red, and this…this truly _odious_ queen decreed that I must be guilty for a crime I didn't commit!" She sighed, and then looked to him again. "How on earth are you going to get me out, anyway? I had some friends that said they'd help me find evidence, but I'm worried something may have happened to them and that they wouldn't be able to do anything. Do you have the key?"

"No key, I was thinking of using this." He said quietly, and summoned Soul Eater to his hand. She gasped.

"Good heavens! Is that the vorpal sword from the looking-glass book?" She asked, her voice threatening to go above a whisper.

"What? No, it's just a normal sword." Riku reared back the weapon. "Just stay back a little bit—"

"That sword may too go snicker-snack, but there is no lock that _that_ can crack."

He sighed as he lowered Soul Eater. "I was hoping you were gone for good."

"And when, young boy, will you finally see? That friends are the only key you'll need?" The Cheshire Cat looked forlorn as he faded into view, a strange look that clashed with his permanent smile. He snapped his fingers and the cage opened widely, and Alice stepped out onto the dais.

"Cheshire Cat! How good it is to see you again."

"It's not good." Riku corrected. "He's mad."

"I think you'll find we're all mad here," The cat grinned again. "I'm mad, you're mad."

"I know I'm not mad like you."

"You must be at least a _little_ bit mad in more ways than one, to work with her."

Alice looked between them both. "Who is he speaking of?" She asked Riku.

"I'll tell you later." He told her and turned back to the cat. "Why are you still here? Have any more words of wisdom to confuse me with?"

"What a coinky-dink, indeed I do! Forty-six, to be true." The Cheshire Cat's grin never wavered. "Take care you won't fall where the asp doth coil. And I'm not speaking of the dame for whom you toil. Your Light is fitful, I can tell, to the foundations it quakes. Just remember: it is to the Heart that love gives and fury takes."

Both Alice and Riku could only stare at the cat for several moments.

"Goodness, that was ominous." Alice finally managed to say.

"Agreed. Look, don't worry about my Light, got it?" Riku scoffed. "I'm trying to find balance, that's the whole point of this. If it's shaky, that's because I only just started."

"All night and no Light does not a Heart make." The Cheshire Cat began to fade from view, starting with the tip of his tail. Soon only its grin remained, and then even that faded.

"Well!" Alice spoke, "I've often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!"

But Riku was already busy with trying to summon a Dark portal. And as its Dark edges began to form in midair, she finally looked over.

"My, my, what is that?"

"A way out of here." Riku said. "Not out of Wonderland, yet, but far enough away you won't have to worry about getting thrown back in jail again."

Alice looked surprised. "Out of Wonderland? You mean you can take me home?"

Riku did a double-take. Did she come here from another world too? Just like him?

He said, "I've got another thing to do here first, but you can tell me about your home in a moment and I'll see what I can do."

"You mean through that?" She looked conflicted. "I'm not sure, it doesn't seem very safe to me."

"It's perfectly safe." Riku dismissed the portal and summoned another, walking out on the other side of the dais behind her and stifling his shudder as much as possible. She had to go along with this. "See? It's just a portal. It won't hurt you."

"Well," Alice looked down around them at the assembled card soldiers, and back at the still-open cage. "If you say so, I suppose."

Riku summoned another portal, and with some hesitation, Alice went through. And then, he followed.

Neither of them noticed the cage's door slowly swinging shut with a _click_ sound and the curtain lowering again, and with one final sweep the cage rose back in the air to where it was.

* * *

 **SORA**

"Evidence…does that mean we'll have to bring a heartless into the court?" Donald asked as they walked along the lotus forest, and put one feathered hand under his bill in a contemplative gesture.

The three of them had been walking around the forest for a while yet, and were anxious to figure out a solution before time ran out very soon. Sora thought she'd seen yellow eyes blinking in the shadows here and there, but nothing came up.

She decided to keep the keyblade in her hand regardless. Oddly enough, the trio hadn't encountered any heartless here in the forest or anywhere else they had looked, only that first room they arrived in, despite the gummi ship's sensors warning them of a heartless presence. Sora wasn't sure what could be holding them back.

"Gawrsh! Even if we showed up with a heartless, that wouldn't necessarily prove anything."

"It might prove enough when it tries to steal one of their Hearts, though." Sora said.

"Then if it succeeds, we'll have two heartless to deal with!" Donald protested. "Maybe more!"

"So what else could we use as evidence?" She asked. "Could we get one of their antennae, maybe? A claw?"

"I'm not sure that would work. Heartless tend to disappear after they've been defeated, they don't leave anything behind."

Sora groaned. "Why can't we just tell them the heartless did it, anyway? It's the truth, and they should know in case they have to protect themselves from any more that could appear like Leon and Yuffie do. We only have like, what, fifteen minutes left for finding evidence if we don't?"

"Ten minutes." Goofy corrected with a sad sigh, pulling back up his glove over his wrist watch. Donald harrumphed.

"We have to protect the world order!"

"You keep mentioning the 'world order' but that makes no sense!" She exclaimed. Their voices echoed in the forest. "Heartless are already upending whatever order existed before, what harm could we do in trying to fix it? We're the good guys!"

"Every person should keep living only in their own world, in their own routine! Too much meddling will cause conflict and chaos at worst, and confusion at best!" Donald waved his staff.

"Really?" A wide smile said from a nearby tree stump. "Well, that may or may not be true."

The smile revealed itself to be the Cheshire Cat. "The Cheshire Cat knows everything. To avoid getting confused is all you have to do."

His striped tail reached behind him to pull out a small box. "Here you go," The Cheshire Cat said simply, tossing it to Sora. "The only evidence you need to show."

"What?" Sora clumsily caught the box, nearly dropping it. "What's in this?" She asked, holding the box this way and that in her hands to inspect it.

She looked up to where the cat was to see if he'd answer her question, but it appeared he was already gone.

"I don't like this. It's too easy." Donald crossed his arms with a huff. "I don't think we should trust him."

"To trust, or not to trust?" The Cheshire Cat's voice echoed around them. "I trust that you'll decide! The Cheshire Cat has all the answers but doesn't always tell. Maybe in that box you'll find a way to make her anger quell."

The three waited to see if he'd say anything else, but it seemed the cat was gone for real this time. Sora looked between where the cat had appeared and down at the box clutched in her hands. It looked perfectly nondescript, like any other cardboard box she'd seen, the only exception being that this one was patterned with pink plaid and had a ribbon-like symbol on the lid. It felt like something was shuffling within, and it piqued her curiosity.

"Wow, Donald, you're right. That really was almost too easy." Sora said, feeling the box continue to stir.

"Exactly." Donald said with a huff. "It's suspicious. Don't open it."

"I think I want to open it."

"Don't open it!"

"Goofy?" They both looked over at him.

"Uh, gawrsh, you guys, I dunno…" He looked nervous at the prospects of being the deciding vote.

"I'm gonna open it." Sora reached for the lid and Donald screeched.

"No! Don't you dare!"

"Too late! Oh, no." Sora had opened the box eagerly and recoiled when a heartless leaped out and darted past them through the lotus forest. "No-o! Come back!" She called to the heartless, to no avail, and gave chase with the others following close behind.

She yelped between steps when Donald struck her with a bolt of lightning from his staff. " _Ouch!_ Jeez, Donald, save it for the heartless!"

"No!" He squawked. He threw another lightning spell at her, and Sora just barely managed to dodge it. "If you had just—" Another strike, and it singed part of her shoe. " _—left the stupid box alone—_ " Donald grumbled as they leapt to try catching it, almost within reach, but the heartless just barely moved away in time. "—we wouldn't even be in this mess!"

"We wouldn't have any evidence, either!" Sora shot back, and nearly fell as she managed to dodge another lightning strike. By now, the heartless had nearly reached the edge of the lotus forest.

A thought occurred to her: If they could just manage to corral it back to the court, where it already looked to be heading anyways, they'd be able to have it restrained as evidence and not have to worry about it making more heartless.

Sora gave another burst of speed as the court came within view. She could see the queen was getting back onto the judge's dais, and that the heartless angled its head towards her. Card soldiers shuffled in in carefully organized rows back to their predetermined places. Even the white rabbit was scrambling to get back to his place. Court was back in session.

"Look out!" Sora shouted as they ran back into view.

The queen looked to them and looked terrified as the heartless rushed in. "What?! Who is that?" She wrenched her head to the three angrily. "Why, you-!"

"That's the evidence, your majesty!" Sora readied her keyblade in hand. It looked like the heartless was preparing to leap. The card soldiers ambled quickly towards the commotion and raised their spears threateningly.

"No!" The queen screamed and raised her arms in a defensive position as the heartless got closer and closer to her.

Its claws were reaching towards her as it jumped to a height Sora wouldn't have thought to be possible for it. This heartless was oddly capable compared to the ones she'd fought in Traverse Town, being able to jump higher and run faster. If she had to face up against a group of heartless like that alone, Sora wasn't sure if she could have done it.

Sora would only have one shot at this, she realized, and she leapt. She wrenched her eyes shut as she swung the weapon before her, and felt the keyblade slice the heartless in half, only opening her eyes when she felt it give. She tumbled to the ground and finally looked around the court.

For a moment everyone was watching the spot where the heartless was in horrified silence as the black smoke from it dissolved. She, Donald, and Goofy's panting from the run was the only sound anyone could hear.

"Do you see?" Sora stood and gave the queen a stubborn look. "Now do you get it? Alice is innocent! Let her go!"

Donald and Goofy went to the tower before any card soldiers thought to block them and pulled the lever to make the cage fall to the ground.

One card soldier, an ace of spades, brandished his spear at them. "Hey!" He tried to interrupt but was unsuccessful. "You can't lower the-!"

It was too late. The two of them had already ran to the cage with Sora close behind. She pulled back the curtain.

And the cage was empty.

* * *

 **RIKU**

Both of them stepped out onto the checkerboard floor of the room Riku arrived in just minutes earlier, the room still vastly overlarge. He could see Alice had a chill, somewhat, from the Dark portal, just as he did.

There were twinges of something in his Heart: Anxiety? Regret?

He couldn't quite identify it for sure.

High above them the furniture loomed menacingly, like it was threatening to collapse in on them any minute. Riku couldn't tell if that was because of the feeling in his Heart or because they actually were threatening to collapse and he wasn't just imagining things.

" _Your second task is simple enough." Maleficent stepped away into the shadows of the chapel and looked up. The green torches flickered on the walls and caused shadows to dance around the heartless insignia above the two. "In fact, you've already done it once before."_

" _What's that?"_

" _Using Darkness to take a world's Heart."_

"So tell me more about how you got here." Riku asked in a normal tone. Neither of them had to be quiet anymore under fear of being caught, now that they were out of the courtroom.

"Well," Alice straightened out her apron and held her hands together as she thought. It seemed to be her default pose. "It's nothing too extraordinary, really. I was only sitting on the riverside with my sister in the middle of history lessons when I was making a daisy crown for my cat, Dinah. I had been _ever_ so bored, you see, for the book I was supposed to be reading didn't have a single picture in it! So in the middle of such doldrums I saw that dear little Dinah was trying to get my attention, and what to my surprise turned out to be a rabbit hurrying by in a little waistcoat holding a watch! I simply had to see what the fuss was about. And so I followed him down his little rabbit-hole, in which I tumbled and tumbled and ended up here. It's such a strange place compared to my home."

That didn't sound anything like how Riku ended up in Hollow Bastion.

"So you just…followed a rabbit? Down its burrow? Why?"

Alice huffed. "Well, you don't exactly see a little white rabbit wearing clothes and carrying a pocket watch every day, do you? I got curious about what sorts of worlds he'd go to."

"You wanted to see other worlds?"

"Of course!"

Riku thought for a moment.

"I wanted to see other worlds too, once. And I did it. Even if my way was infinitely less crazy than yours," He joked.

"Really? How?"

"The portals. I had some help the first time to figure out how to make them, but now I can do them on my own."

"But those things seem so…" Alice trailed off, but he could tell what she meant by her look of apprehension.

"Dangerous? Nah, they're totally safe. Sure, it hurts a little bit, and it _definitely_ feels weird, but the reward is worth it." He flexes his fingers subconsciously, thinking of that feeling of freedom.

No oceans to contain him anymore. No borders around, or below, or above.

"I could show you other worlds too if you want. Ones that make a little more sense than this one." Riku cracked a smile.

"That sounds lovely, though I do wonder what would happen to my friends if they discovered that I left." Alice said. "When should we go?"

"Don't worry about your friends, they'll be fine." Riku wasn't entirely sure of that, but nothing in there seemed particularly dangerous. Her friends would be perfectly alright if they were residents of this world. "We'll go in a moment. Just have one more thing to do first." Riku searched around the room.

" _I…I don't know."_

" _You wanted to help bring balance, didn't you? Balance with the Darkness?" Maleficent gave him a stern look. Riku could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand on end._

" _Yeah, b-but," He scrambled to come up with an excuse. "I had help with taking the islands' Heart. And I don't have any clue as to where any other worlds' Hearts could be, finding the one on Destiny Islands was just a lucky guess."_

 _Riku didn't think the excuse would work, but it was enough. Maleficent relaxed her expression into something a little more kind._

" _It's quite alright, child. I'm sure you can do this on your own. As I mentioned, you've already done it once before. I believe in you." She smiled, but it looked fake to Riku. The green flames echoed in her eyes a little too much._

 _She continued. "And as for finding the Heart, the Heart of a world is always in a significant place. Though there isn't much rhyme or reason to it. It's always a place that is significant to a person or the world's people."_

His eyes fell on the sleeping doorknob. Riku remembered the cat mentioning that he 'wouldn't need it yet'.

"Alice, what do you know about that doorknob? Have you talked to it?"

"Him?" She turned to look. "Ah, yes! He was such a tricky fellow when I first arrived, but past his constant joking he did seem quite genuine. He helped me when I was crying earlier from how dreadful the conundrum I was in was."

Bingo.

"Hey." Riku stalked towards the doorknob and ignored the disquiet in his Heart by acting forcefully. "Hey! Wake up!"

The doorknob blearily blinked against the room's light.

"What's this?" He yawned. "What do you want?"

"I need you to open up."

"No." The doorknob frowned, and his eyes slowly closed to try and go back to sleep.

"Open up!"

"I said no. And besides," A slow smile spread across his face, and it made his keyhole-shaped mouth look oddly shaped. "I'm _locked._ "

Riku narrowed his eyes at it. It didn't bode well if the keyhole to a world's Heart was locked.

"I thought you said he was nice." He remarked to Alice.

"Goodness, I said he was genuine!" She looked between them. "Truly, he can be nice too, I—Mr. Doorknob?" Alice tried kindly. "May you please open up?"

"Absolutely not. Not for this fellow."

"But why?" She asked.

"Why not?" The doorknob scowled. "He disturbed my sleep quite rudely. And besides, I hardly need to look at him to know he's up to no good deeds here."

"I'm trying to do the right thing." Riku scowled.

"Then no good deed goes unpunished." The doorknob looked over at him. "And no _bad deed_ will go unrighted!"

"That's it." Riku summoned Soul Eater and reared it high. Alice gasped at him.

"How many times have I told thee? That friends are the only key you'll need?"

"Twice." Riku didn't bother looking over to know it was the Cheshire Cat.

"And how many times until you learn? How far will your decorum go out of turn?"

He exhaled. "Look, are you going to open the door or not?"

"Perhaps I will, or perhaps you'll see. If you had said 'please' I'd have done it quite happily."

Riku lowered Soul Eater and rolled his eyes. "You're going to do it anyways, aren't you? Why do you keep helping me if you're going to keep giving me conflicting advice?"

The cat shrugged, and its head bobbled off of its body somewhat with the movement.

"Can't curiosity as reason enough suffice?"

The Cheshire Cat grinned wider than before as it snapped its fingers. Riku had a few choice words in mind as to curiosity and cats, but anything he was going to say died on his tongue when he heard the door creak open slowly, the sound punctuated with the doorknob's protests.

"Hey-! Stop! You shouldn't be touching this door!"

"Ah, but I'm not touching anything, am I?" The cat said.

Nobody responded as the door opened wider.

And just like on the play island behind its own door, there was Light.

The Heart of Wonderland was almost exactly like the Heart of the islands, but not quite: It had the same appearance of a great star of Light in midair, but this Light was different. Whereas the Light of the islands' Heart reminded one of the fierce voracious glows of diamonds and wildfires, this Light wasn't anything like that. This Heart had the dappled glow of sunlight streaming through a forest's canopy, the twinkle of morning dewdrops on flower petals. But this Heart was every bit as beautiful, too. It trilled in a chirruping note.

All he and Alice could do for a minute was stare at it, before Riku shakily held up his hand to it.

He struggled to rile his Darkness in the face of so much Light.

Riku tried again. He wasn't sure if he wanted to, but he _had_ to, if he wanted any chance at a keyblade…

"Whatever you are going to do, please don't do it."

He opened his eyes and looked to Alice beside him. She had an almost haunted look on her face. In that moment she reminded Riku of Kairi quite a bit, but he couldn't figure out how.

"What…What makes you say that?"

"It's as I know what you're going to do but I can't explain it. I would quite like to be able to, but I can't." Alice took a shaky breath and continued staring at the Heart. "It's just a _feeling_. A quite bad feeling at that. Just, please don't do whatever comes next."

He paused and looked to the Heart. Riku studied its Light, listened to its trill.

And finally, Riku slowly lowered his hand.

He used it to grab at his Heart instead. It was screaming at him by now, the gnawing repentant feeling growing only louder as this whole scene went on, and he couldn't ignore it anymore.

"Okay." He said, more to himself. And once more, surer this time, "Okay."

Riku lowered his hand entirely and dismissed Soul Eater from the other. He pulled the edge of the door to where it slowly shut until it was closed entirely.

Nobody in the small gathering said anything for several minutes. Alice still had that haunted look on her face as she looked at the closed door, the doorknob of which stared up at Riku with grimace that was tinged with fear. Up above, but not far, sat the Cheshire Cat who looked at the two children with a smile that was equally proud and playful.

Riku stood a step away from them all and could only examine his hands. His Heart had stopped its upheaval.

"Do you still want to come with me?" He asked Alice.

She tore her eyes away from the door to look at him. "I'm not sure anymore."

"Look." Riku closed his eyes and breathed out. "I'm risking enough already by not doing my second task, so I need you to come with me at least. I know I presented it like a choice earlier, but—"

"It's not quite a choice at all, is it?" She spoke.

"No. It's not. But the place I'm taking you…It's nice. It's just like a castle, you'll like it." He decided to leave out the part where the citadel in question looked foreboding inside and out. He was at least being honest in saying it was a nice place. "And the lady I work for is nice too, at least to me. Don't listen to what he tells you," Riku jerked a thumb at the Cheshire Cat, who only grinned wider and wider yet. "She's no asp or snake or whatever he called her. She's a fairy, and I'm sure she'll be nice to you too. And I wasn't lying earlier when I said the world I'll take you to makes more sense than this one. There's actual rhyme and reason to it, not just rhyme." Riku finished with a glare at the cat, who shrugged.

"Fine. I'll go with you." Alice smoothed out her apron again. "Just promise me you won't attempt whatever you were going to do to that Heart again?"

"I promise." Riku said, and he meant it.

He held out his hand away from them and summoned a Dark portal. Riku put one foot in Hollow Bastion, and kept one foot in Wonderland, and offered his hand to Alice.

She took it, and together they walked through. And with that, the Dark portal disappeared.

In the tumultuous silence of the room the Cheshire Cat gave a pleased huff.

"Well!" He said, "That was certainly a show."

The doorknob looked at him with outrage. "A show? _A show?!_ You call that 'a show'?!"

"'Twas all planned, I'll have you know." The cat said with a snap of his fingers. "But worry not, to sleep you'll go!"

"Wait! Don-!" The doorknob stilled for a split second as his features went perfectly blank. "What was…? Why, Cheshire Cat, so good to see you again. Can you come back later, though? I was in the middle of a nap." He yawned.

"Of course, friend! You'll have your nap." The Cheshire Cat stretched luxuriously and yawned. "Perhaps even I could do with a quick nightcap."

And with that the cat faded to nothing until only his grin remained, until it slowly faded too.

* * *

 **SORA**

The queen was furious, worse than ever before.

"Alice-! Where is Alice?!" She screamed, pounding her fists on the table before pointing at all of them. "All of you! Go search for Alice _this instant!_ I don't care who finds her, just do it!"

Cardsmen shuffled left and right, with most of them scrambling through the green court and into the maze of topiary beyond. Even the white rabbit scrambled out of there, the sounds of his pocket watch ticking in his wake. Only a few cardsmen remained to stay with the queen.

She looked to the three in a black mood. "Well? What are you waiting for?"

"N-N-Nothing, your majesty!" Goofy stammered, and Sora and Donald hurriedly followed him out of the green back into the lotus forest.

In the forest they could see a couple of other cardsmen darting about, but the three were left alone. Sora could hear them shouting for Alice in the quiet of the forest to no response.

It was the same quiet that made Sora relaxed enough to vent.

"That queen is crazy!" She angrily smacked away an oversized leaf and looked up when one of the flowers shouted at her indignantly for it. "Sorry! Sorry." She apologized as the daffodil crossed its leafy arms and turned its nose up at her. Sora continued walking. "Really, she's insane. She just calls for people to be beheaded left and right? What kind of ruler does that?"

"King Mickey wouldn't do that, for sure." Goofy sighed, and Donald looked similarly downcast.

"Oh yeah, we're supposed to be looking for him too, aren't we?" Sora wondered as she lifted a leaf for the three of them to walk under easily. "And my mom. And Kairi. And Riku. And those Ansem Reports. No news on any of them." She listed off dejectedly.

"Well, this is just the first place we've been to, remember." Donald said. "There's lots and lots of worlds out there."

"That's true! We can't lose hope." Goofy agreed.

"Yeah, smiling faces and everything." But Sora's face didn't look to be smiling at all. "I'm just worried. I want to at least make sure my mom's okay."

"The love you seek, the love he shunts. Even the Cheshire Cat was a kitten once."

The three looked up to see the Cheshire Cat had alighted on a tree branch and was currently in the process of removing his ever-present smile and turning it upside down so that it was a frown instead.

"A mother's love is either none or all, and I'm sad to see the children's pall." The cat finished with a flicker of his tail.

"I, uh," Sora wasn't sure what to say. "Are you talking to me?"

"You?"

"Yes?"

"Who?" The cat started juggling his own head.

"Me!"

"You?"

"We already established this!" Donald raised a fist. "Have you seen Alice or not, you mangy cat!"

"Donald, I don't think you should be mean…" Goofy cautioned, but the cat curled as his smile returned upright.

"Oh, Alice. Oh dear! The girl you seek is far and near!"

"So, you know where she is? Where is she?" Sora asked.

"Somewhere beyond your eye can see. But I can assure you she'll sleep peacefully!"

"Wait, sleep?" Donald questioned as he raised his staff. "Did you do something to Alice? Where did she go?"

"Follow me and perhaps you'll know."

"And why should I follow you anywhere?" Donald demanded.

"Donald, he might know something." Sora said.

"Yeah, Donald, he helped us out a bit already, ahyuk!"

The cat grinned widely.

"You should listen to your friends, little duck."

" _Little du-!_ I'll make you pay for that!" Donald screeched, nearly unintelligible again as he wielded his staff.

The Cheshire Cat's laugh echoed around them in the forest as he leapt from the branch to the forest floor. And with that, the cat ran as Donald gave chase. With nothing else to do, Sora and Goofy followed as fast they could.

"Donald, wait!" Goofy cried.

"Donald!" Sora shouted as they ran. She wasn't really sure why he was set off by that comment. Wasn't he a duck? She was confused.

They ran through the rest of the forest, dodging card soldiers that were running about themselves and ducking over and under the leaves of whatever flowers were along the path. Though more often than not, they were unsuccessful, and angered more than a few daisies and pansies in their wake.

The trio, plus cat, skirted around the edge of the court green in their chase, with the queen barely noticing them in their speed.

It was only through the topiary archways, down the hall, and past the overlarge bed did anyone stop, too tired to continue. The Cheshire Cat gave them all another maddening grin before climbing up onto the chair piece by piece, his paws going first.

"Just wait 'till I get my hands on you!" Donald said, and his staff crackled with magic.

"It's not me you need to fight." The Cheshire Cat started once his mouth had reattached. "When you're in the middle of Darkness, don't forget your Light!

Wait, what did that mean? Sora took a glance around to check, but she didn't see any signs of Darkness around. She could see Goofy and Donald doing the same.

"Darkness?" The trio echoed at once.

"Indeed." The cat grinned. He didn't look winded at all from the chase. "Light and Dark, Dark and Light. Only together can things be right."

He continued, as he snapped his fingers and small flames lit themselves in the votives around the room, "Did you know that when you turn on a light, a shadow is made?" Another snap, and the stove was lit. "And yet it is the _Dark_ of which so many are afraid."

"But…" The cat trailed off. "Perhaps they are not wrong. But they are not right, either."

The shadows in the corners of the room and under the bed and table became especially stark. Sora uneasily stepped from foot to foot and summoned her keyblade. She could see Donald and Goofy readying their staff and shield.

"Are you prepared for the worst?" The Cheshire Cat grinned and snapped his fingers once more. "If you're not…that's too bad!"

Out from under the bed Sora could see something begin to crawl.

"Guys…?" She said shakily, holding her keyblade out in front of her. She pointed and saw her friends follow with their eyes.

It extended one long double-jointed leg, and Sora saw that whatever it was, it was garishly colored, following a color palette of greens and pinks and purples. Its feet were clawed front and back. And finally, its head—or more accurately, heads—swooped out, one stacked on top of the other, so that it glared at them with five sets of eyes. The heartless made a papery sound as it unfurled its arms like origami, and it revealed to carry two batons in its hands.

"You…You tricked us!" Donald cried.

"Tricked you? Nothing of the sort." The Cheshire Cat watched them gleefully. "The Cheshire Cat is always there to help the weak!"

The heartless began to stomp towards them, twirling its batons. Sora was unnerved by how its legs bended outwards on both sides when it flexed them.

She took a deep breath, and then she charged.

The thing was tall, no doubt about it. Only Donald could manage to get any significant hits in with his magic, all Sora and Goofy could manage was to jump up and down trying to strike what they could. Which, more often than not, turned out to be nothing but its knees.

Sora saw with a frustrated start that when she could manage to even hit its knees, which was rarely given the thing would not stop moving, which meant its knees were continually moving, she couldn't even do much damage to it. What little few cuts she and Goofy had managed seeped out piddling amounts of Darkness.

She saw Donald strike it with several lightning spells, which were visibly doing damage. But she could see he was getting exhausted after all of the running around earlier, and whatever magic stores he had must have been running low. Sora wished he hadn't been so impulsive with striking them with spells. And, not for the first time that day, Sora wished she had magic too.

 _Crack!_ Donald gave a victorious cry as he landed a significant hit, even with the cry being laced with his tired panting. The lightning left one jagged crack down the heartless' faces, which seeped out quite a stream of Darkness. The creature kneeled down in a daze.

Sora and Goofy rushed in quickly with a new burst of energy and struck wherever they could. Faces, arms, its torso. It worked better than hitting only its legs, but not enough.

Sora used her frustration at this to fuel her fighting, and she managed to leave another crack splintering off of the one Donald made. But she could tell even this was not enough. Whatever this thing was, it needed magic to be defeated.

Over the course of the fight, Sora could tell it was moving in a particular direction. Towards the stove, she realized, as she watched it twirl its batons. But why? It seemed to rely mostly on its feet so far.

She didn't like this.

"Keep it away from the stove!" She yelled to the others.

"What? Why?" Donald asked.

"I don't know, but it's heading towards it! I don't like that!"

"Guys?" Goofy curled himself in behind his shield. "I think it might be planning to use those batons!"

"Get the batons out of its hands!" Sora shouted and followed after the heartless.

They followed behind her, but she realized quickly that none of them could do anything apart from perhaps Donald. It was as if the trio were nothing but ants to the overlarge heartless, and it stepped away from their hits as easily as anything.

And every time it stepped away, it got closer to the stove. Sora saw it hold its batons out towards it.

"No!" Sora shouted at it. "Stop!"

It didn't work. And with horror Sora watched as a coil of flame snaked its way up the baton. The heartless gave a rustling sound that sounded pleased.

And all along, the Cheshire Cat watched the events with an ineffable grin.

The heartless reared back from the stove with both of its batons lit now, and it juggled them far above. The three split up and ran in opposite directions. And with a warbling sound from its heads, the heartless began to throw fireballs towards each of them.

One hit Goofy head on, and he thereafter began running and screaming, his shield flailing in his hand. Donald turned away from where he was running towards and instead tried to pursue Goofy, calling for him to stay still so Donald could try to put him out with magic.

Sora looked to her friends, and then she looked to the gargantuan furniture around the room. If she needed height to hit it…

She gave a running leap and managed to latch on the seat of the chair. She pulled herself up, using the keyblade's tooth to latch it over the back of the chair's supports for extra leverage, and waited for several terrifying moments until the heartless wandered closer. And then, once she was close enough, Sora leapt for it with her keyblade ready.

It didn't work.

All she managed to do was leave a long scrape down its back and grab its attention. And now it looked to her with ten eyes and all the anger held within. The heartless twirled its batons, making for a circle of flame on either side of it. It reared back its arms with a rustling chatter.

"All right, now." The Cheshire Cat chortled. "You'll never make it like that!"

He snapped his fingers, and Sora reflexively flinched. Until she felt pins and needles travel from head to toe down her body, as if it had all fallen asleep and woken up. She looked down at her hands. Nothing seemed different.

"Huh?" Sora asked him. "What did you do?"

"I only gave you something you were missing." The cat angled his head. "I did say I was always there to help the weak, didn't I? Try pointing your keyblade at it now."

With nothing else in mind, Sora did. And with a lunge, the end of her keyblade pointed at the heartless, Sora saw a burst of white energy come out of the end of her weapon as the air around her grew cold for a moment.

It worked. The heartless' batons went out, a thin crust of ice caked over them. It looked down at its batons with what seemed to be confusion.

"Sora?" Donald yelled from his and Goofy's side of the room. "Did you just do that?!"

"I…I think so?" Sora called back. She looked up at the Cheshire Cat. "What did you do?"

"The keyblade wielder should be able to use a little magic, right?" The cat curled up. "For your quest to perpetuate the day and stave off night."

"Wait, magic?" She grew impossibly excited and it was as if all the tiredness from the day were never there. "You gave me _magic?_ "

Without waiting for a response, she aimed her keyblade at the heartless. Again and again she fired off bolts of ice, and sometimes they hit. The heartless was maddeningly capable of dodging despite its size.

 _This isn't working,_ Sora thought with disappointment. What was she doing wrong?

"Sora!" Donald shouted as he and Goofy scrambled to get closer. "You need to concentrate!"

"What?"

"Accumulate power at the tip of the keyblade! Focus and imagine the enemy freezing!"

Sora looked to the heartless as it began to amble towards the stove. No,she thought. Not again.

She ran to get closer and readied her keyblade. Sora stopped at a close range, the weapon pointed upward at the heartless, and she closed her eyes.

In her mind she saw ice crust over the rest of the heartless, thick and impenetrable. A transparent film that encrusted its legs and kept it from moving. Batons permanently extinguished, multiple heads and eyes frozen in place.

Snow. Frost. Arctic.

The enemy will freeze, she thought, and could feel the pins and needles travel through her arms into the keyblade. Towards the end of it.

"The enemy will freeze." Sora said to herself. The heartless got closer to the stove. She tightened her grip.

" _FREEZE!_ " She yelled.

An enormous bolt of magic shot out of the keyblade, and Sora could almost _feel_ it as the magic went from hilt to tip. A small blizzard surrounded her and the heartless, small snowflakes forming in the air, and the magic wrapped around every inch of the heartless and solidified into a thick impenetrable coating of ice.

The heartless was completely still. Even the stove was extinguished from the blast, along with every flame in every light of the room. And with a crashing sound just like glass, the now frozen heartless splintered apart. Heads went everywhere, legs broke into fragments, batons broke into so many pieces they could never be put back together again.

And from the frozen rubble a great glimmering Heart rose and disappeared high in the air. And with it, the vestiges of the heartless dissolved too.

The trio stared after where the heartless was defeated in a daze.

Goofy was the first to speak. "Gawrsh."

Even the Cheshire Cat seemed surprised. "Oh, my."

And then both Donald and Goofy gave her a hug.

"You did it!" Donald cheered. It was one of the few times Sora had seen him happy and not grumbling about something, the only other time being when they defeated the Traverse Town heartless.

"Wooo-ho-ho-hoo!" Goofy applauded.

Sora laughed. Not at them, but with glee. She had magic now. She had defeated a heartless. Maybe Aerith was right; She really could do this.

Behind them, the doorknob yawned.

"What a racket," He complained. "How's a doorknob to get any sleep?"

"How could you sleep in the middle of all this?" Donald flapped his arms angrily.

He yawned again, and Sora got an idea. The doorknob's mouth…was shaped like a keyhole.

Her guess was right. She saw something glimmering from within his mouth, a shape. Sora bent down to look closer.

And without warning, her keyblade stirred to life. A great glow formed at the end, and for a moment Sora thought it would be more magic, but it wasn't. Not the kind she was expecting. Starbursts swirled around the end as it gave a chirruping chime, and it forced her arm to aim the keyblade towards the doorknob's mouth.

A dazzling beam of Light came out of the end of it, and once it reached the doorknob's mouth, towards the keyhole, Sora could hear a latching sound come from within like it was locking. And with that sound, the Light faded, and the doorknob fell asleep.

"What was that?" Donald asked.

"Did you hear that?" Sora replied. "It sounded like something closed."

They looked to the doorknob again when he started to cough, and a small colorful chip flew out of his mouth. He wrinkled his bulbous nose.

"I'm probably coming down with a cold." He yawned again, and fell back asleep.

"I think that's a gummi block!" Goofy bent down to pick it up.

"Goofy, that came out of his mouth—" Donald started, but stopped himself. "Never mind."

"I'm wearing gloves, it's alright." Goofy replied. He examined the chip and held it up to the light. "This gummi block ain't like the others, no sir!"

"Can I see?" Donald leaned over. "You're right. I've never seen this type of gummi block before."

"Gummi block?"

"Yeah," Donald looked over to her. "They're used as components for gummi ships. It could be useful."

They all turned at the sound of clapping.

"Splendid!" The Cheshire Cat cheered. "You're quite the hero!"

"Hey, cat." Sora turned to him. He smiled.

"Yes, that is what I am."

"What side are you on?" She asked. "You summoned the heartless, and you gave me magic. Are you part of the Darkness? Where's Alice?"

"The Cheshire Cat's on no side but the Cheshire Cat's own, and the Cheshire Cat goes nowhere but where the Cheshire Cat roams." He said. "Darkness? Or Light? Either way, sunbeams set to make way for the night. There is no such thing as a sun with an everlasting Light, nor can a spirit stand an everlasting fight."

"Are you still talking to us or yourself?" Donald asked.

"Hem, Hum, what can I say? Can roses still bloom with all night and no day? Far from a garden beset with snakes, gone astray?" The cat coiled up cozily.

Sora sighed. "Can you at least tell us where Alice is?"

"My friends, I'm afraid she's gone! Into the shadows with a moonbeam, who travels pale and wan!"

"What does that even mean?"

The cat laughed.

"A new moon shall rise, wreathed in blacks." The Cheshire Cat said. "But time will tell if its crescent shall wax!"

And with that, the Cheshire Cat turned his head on its side and faded away. All that was left was a sideways grin, looking much like a crescent moon. Until moments later even that faded too.

"Well that was a waste of time." Donald said dejectedly. Neither of them said otherwise this time.

Even if the world's Heart was safe, even if the heartless were gone, Wonderland was still missing its Alice.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

She couldn't deny that the current circumstances were frustrating.

Being able to reach Sora but unable to talk to her, being able to reach her body but not move it, and in between them all she do was sit on this island. In this dream.

One thing Kairi noticed about being able to reach Sora was that she was _un_ able to reach her when she was asleep, as she had discovered over the course of two panic-stricken hours where Kairi thought she had permanently lost contact. And it was shortly thereafter that she then noticed that the passage of time in this place was entirely unpredictable compared to the outside world. She would withdraw from watching Sora to check on her own body and come back to find hours had passed or take a break for an hour or so to find only minutes had gone by in the outside world.

And if anything, that only unnerved her more. If the discrepancy was already so significant, how much bigger could it get? Could years end up hurrying by if Kairi pulled away for only a second? Could she miss some vital piece of information to get her out of here if she wasn't careful? And what could happen to her body in the meantime?

What could she do, if she couldn't do anything?

The only clue she had to how she got here was the familiar voice she'd heard when it seemed like she separated from her own body.

" _One day, when you're in trouble, the Light within you will lead you to the Light of another. Someone to keep you safe."_

Light to Light…Someone to keep her safe…

It still didn't make much sense. If those words—were they a spell? She saw how Sora and that duck, Donald, were able to do magic and perhaps those words were something similar—were meant to keep her safe, wouldn't they have made it so that her body at least ended up somewhere it wasn't abandoned?

The only connection Kairi could make was how she could still see Sora. Her Light was connected to Sora's Light, she could feel it. But it still didn't explain _how_ they were connected or why.

She supposed she'd have to think more on that bit later. But there was one more clue she'd found. When Sora had locked the keyhole to that door.

Kairi felt a burst of power from behind it, even if Sora didn't (another fact about their connection Kairi filed away in her brain). Somewhere behind that door…there was a Heart. Kairi was sure of it. And it was a shudderingly powerful one.

When that happened, she was reminded of the door on Destiny Islands. The play island door that called to her on that night. Kairi marveled to herself how it felt both like so long ago that that happened, and yet no time at all. Time here moved with no order.

It gave her a thought: If she was on a play island just like the one on Destiny Islands, here in this dream…was there a door just like that one here too?

Her first reaction to the idea was fear. The door on the play island opened to only Darkness, and it was how Kairi had lost the ability to use her own body properly in the first place.

She forced herself to ignore it. It can't do anything to me, she thought. This is just a dream. This is just some weird, messed up dream, and nothing's going to happen.

I'm only going to see if there's a door, Kairi told herself. That's all.

She got up unsteadily. Kairi brushed the dream-sand off of her dream-clothes, and she journeyed up the wooden dream-walkway and listened to them make dull thuds under her dream-shoes. This place really was just like a copy of the play island.

Kairi pushed away the dream-plants at the cave entrance to the sound of the dream-waterfall and paid no mind to the dream-rustling of their dream-leaves.

This is a dream. This is a dream. This is a dream.

She repeated the words in her head but couldn't bring herself to believe them.

Kairi walked down the dream-cavern under the gaze of dream-drawings, and she still didn't believe the words.

And in the dream-cave at the very end, replete with dream-tree roots and dream-sand and dream-drawings all around, there was a door. A dream-door, she told herself.

And she still didn't believe the words.

Kairi could only look at it with fear for a moment. But curiously, her Heart didn't feel foreboding. She used this knowledge to steel herself.

She walked to the door.

Kairi held her hand out to the door, even, to try and open it physically in some way, but she needn't have bothered.

The door began to slowly open on its own.

Kairi froze. The door opened wider.

And all she saw was Light.

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTES**

I DID NOT EXPECT IT TO TURN OUT TO BE 19k WORDS LONG AND I DID NOT EXPECT IT TO BUST MY BRAIN SO MUCH THAT IT ENDED UP BEING A MONDAY UPDATE INSTEAD OF A FRIDAY AAAAHHHH

I AM SO SORRY OMG ಥ_ಥ

Okay! Anyways, this chapter was really unexpectedly complicated to do. I juggled like five different things to try to do some justice to all of the source material here but I think I only ended up getting some ungodly amalgam that ended up being somewhere in the middle for all of them. Oopsie daisy :(

Also, there's references abound here! I'll point out a few of them in the notes, but some others are hiding.

NOTES:  
1\. The foods Goofy lists off as what the shrink potion tastes like are a reference to Alice saying what the drink tasted like in the book (and the movie I think). Donald saying he can't taste anything is just a lame joke I threw in about how ducks only have something like 400 taste buds (compared to dogs having around 1700, and humans having around 9000)

2\. The moogles' world! The Jagd Woods! It's a reference to Lightning Returns: FF13! And yes, this absolutely does mean I'm going to throw Lightning cameo in this story somewhere. I'm not sure yet, it'll likely be in future games, but she'll be there. I promise.

3\. Sora finding the elixir tastes like pancakes is going to be at least semi-relevant, I promise. I remember how the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series had nectar and ambrosia taste like the user's favorite foods and I thought that was a really neat idea so I worked it in here. There was actually a cute little scene where I show you guys' Goofy's favorite food, but I couldn't find a way to work it in, so it'll go into the WIP folder until I figure it out. You'll see it, it's way too cute for me to leave it out forever.

4\. Hoo boy, the Cheshire Cat. First off, I am not sorry about the rhyming! I know it's not technically accurate, that he doesn't rhyme incessantly in either the book or the movie, but dammit I started and I couldn't stop. I'm not kidding, I was making Donald accidentally rhyme with him at one point before I caught myself. On a more serious note, CC's words do give a loooot of exposition here (it's not an adventure without at least one prophetic rhyme). A lot of what he says can be taken in more ways than one! However, he will not appear again, and I am very sad about that. I can only imagine what CC's boss fight could have been like if he'd taken Maleficent's offer.

5\. "'Tween you and the queen I'd prefer hellebore." Hellebore is a poisonous plant, CC's making a dark joke. I'm sorry, I was very tired at that point and it rhymed.

6\. I know that, judging by the weird pipes in the ceiling, it looks in CoM that Maleficent gave Riku a room in the dark underbelly of the castle where the plumbing and machinery are, but I kinda had to change that a teensy bit to work with the narrative that Maleficent's bribing Riku throughout KH1 to A) think of her as a positive maternal figure to help brainwash him, and B) have him associate the Darkness with the idea of power, emotional enrichment and vindication, and personal material wealth. Not that Riku really cares about that last part as much—in one of the deleted prologue scenes I mentioned that Riku's mother was a podiatrist with her own practice so he wasn't exactly worse off, but the idea of him being able to accrue personal wealth that isn't beholden to anyone he resents, that he can do with as he sees fit, is a big deal to Riku because it's another indicator to him that Darkness = Freedom and Power.

7\. Riku...oof. Uh. Okay, all I'm going to say on the matter of his hijinks in this chapter is that that "Riku is a little shit" tag is there for some good reasons.

8\. You might have noticed bits and pieces with Kairi's parts in the story very slightly alluding to her princess of heart powers. Alice's too, a teensy bit. I have some (albeit very nebulous) ideas as to what the individual princesses of heart may be capable of, and what they're capable of as a whole, but I don't honestly think it'll come up much. Alice's certainly won't come up, but Kairi's will definitely be alluded to a little more with Namine in the CoM arc, and gone into more detail on with KH3 and potentially be put into use depending on how canon goes.

I might write some sort of a completely independent, non-canon story that extends post-canon that actually uses the princesses of heart and develops them a bunch, but that's such a far-off possibility that it could be literal years before I really think on the matter of seriously doing it, esp. since this novelization series has to be gotten out of the way first before I'll allow myself to consider it. However, that story idea _is_ the biggest chunk of the reason why I started doing this whole shebang in the first place, so it's probably more likely than you think. I'd probably do it under a super secret alias, though, it's absurdly self-indulgent (like, worse than this series)

9\. I know in KH1, it's technically canon for that giant, ridiculously conspicuous, flaming baton-wielding heartless to have been the one to take Alice (or at least SDG think so), but I don't believe that for a gosh dang second. You're telling me this several stories tall _thing_ tromped its way into the Queen of Hearts' court, took Alice, and probably made a giant ruckus doing so, without _a single one of the cardsmen, the white rabbit,_ _or the Queen of Hearts noticing?!_ Nah, man, that's the most unbelievable part of this series. So I changed it to Riku taking her, just like he takes Jasmine later on. I thought that made way more sense.

EDIT: Would you believe me if I told you the trickmaster kicked my butt like 5 times? First real boss in the game and I couldn't handle it :(


	5. Chapter 4: The Boy in the Pale Throne

**RIKU**

Nothing had changed since he had left Hollow Bastion just earlier that day.

The sun was still low in the sky as it had been since Riku first arrived, still stuck in that never-ending sunset even when the clock struck midnight. Like the sun was an impromptu sword of Damocles hanging over the world.

Riku wondered if night would ever fall on Hollow Bastion. And at the same time, he hoped it never would.

The hallway still bustled with heartless running about on whatever errands Maleficent had commanded them to, the pipes on the outside walls that he could see through the windows still exhaling Darkness and steam in irregular trails. The green flames of the torches on the walls still flickered on their brackets.

Nothing had changed. But why did it feel like something was still out of place?

Riku heard Alice stepping out of the Dark portal behind him and the soft swishing noise as it dispersed.

"You certainly weren't wrong about this place being like a castle," Alice mused as she looked around, keeping an eye on the heartless. "Though it is quite dreary. Similar to castles I'd see in history books I suppose, rather than fairy tales."

He shrugged and gestured for her to follow him as he walked through the halls. "It's not the happiest place, but it's still nice enough. I was right when I said this place was nice, wasn't I?"

"I'm not sure," Alice said with a pensive expression and a shiver. "It looks nice, but something's rather… _unsettling_ beyond appearance, I'd say."

Riku gave her a confused glance. Nothing about this place seemed too off to him after he got used to the initial shock. Was this some sort of Princess of Heart thing?

"Well, other than that, you're going to meet Maleficent in a bit." He replied. "Maybe she'll have you go on errands and give you a place to stay too, like me. That way you'll see other worlds like you wanted."

Riku watched as Alice looked more unsure at the suggestion. They walked on together in an uncomfortable silence, neither of the two willing to break it.

For quite a long while as they walked he thought back to what had transpired back in Wonderland. Or, more accurately, didn't transpire.

Riku pulled at one of the wristbands on his arms.

"Hey, Alice? Could you do a favor for me, when you meet Maleficent?"

"What is it?"

He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding until she said that. Riku knew he wasn't in much of a position to be asking for any favors from her, but this was important.

"If she asks you what happened, can you say we never found the Heart of Wonderland?"

Alice could only blink at him for several seconds.

"Goodness, you want me to _lie?_ " She gaped. "To her?"

"I, ah, well…" Riku ran his fingers through his hair. He sighed. "Yes."

"But why? What if she finds out?"

 _Why? Because I'm scared to see what happens when she finds out I disobeyed her,_ a quiet corner of his mind hissed. _Because I want a keyblade and I'm too weak to do the dirty work of getting one. Because I don't want mom to have been right when she said I was a prison, or a mistake, or unlovable, but maybe she was right all along._

But what he said instead was, "She won't find out. I'll make sure of it."

Neither of them said anything for a while, both of them lost in thought while walking down hallway after hallway towards the chapel where Maleficent waited, each darker than the last.

"You said earlier, to the doorknob, that you were trying to do the right thing." Alice said.

"Yeah."

Alice stopped walking.

"Does this…'right thing' include doing whatever you were going to do to that Heart?"

Riku hesitated. "Yes, it was supposed to."

In that moment he knew both of them were thinking that doing the 'right thing' also included taking her to Hollow Bastion against her will, to the home of the heartless. But neither of them said anything about that.

"If you're not just doing the right thing, but _anything_ that isn't bad, why would you need to lie about it?" She looked him right in the eye.

"And if this Maleficent is as kind as you say," Alice finished, "Why would you be scared to tell her the truth?"

* * *

 **KAIRI**

This wasn't a dream, Kairi realized the minute her eyes adjusted.

Whatever this place was that she had found herself in—the play island she arrived at, the door she opened, and the room she found herself in now, every little bit of it was real.

And she realized that the second she laid eyes on the boy in the pale throne.

It was his Light that she saw first, that same Light that nearly blinded her without even trying to see beyond into his Heart. There was not a speck of Darkness to be found in him, no shadows in the corners of himself that were there for everyone else she'd ever seen. The Light left not even wavering lilac shadows in him like the ones in this equally overwhelmingly bright room.

But the strangest thing about that Light, beyond its pervasiveness in his Heart, was that it seemed artificial.

That Light reminded her so much of the blue-toned fluorescent lighting in classrooms and offices that left spots in your vision when you looked away from them. The light that moths and spiders would creep towards as night's veil covered the islands. The Light in the boy that slept on the throne had none of the natural brilliance of the sun or stars, but rather the almost caustic burn of ultraviolet rays.

And this Light, she realized with a start, was familiar. It was a Light Kairi had seen nearly every day of her life since waking up on the islands, one of two in a girl that was her best friend.

 _Kairi sat back and watched as her friends dueled on the shore. It was coming up on one and a half years since she had first woken up on Destiny Islands, and six months since she'd been assigned to her permanent foster home with the mayor and his wife. Six months since she saw an empty seat beside Sora in that classroom and they became instant friends._

 _It still surprised her sometimes to see two Hearts in Sora, still brought to mind small whispers of memory from a time before Kairi woke up on the now-familiar shore. But she learned to disregard it. The two Hearts didn't seem to change Sora's behavior at all, didn't do much of anything aside from one's constant Light quietly remaining alongside the other one's small measure of Darkness that seemed much more natural in comparison. And so the fact was simply catalogued in the little file in her head marked 'Sora', written down beneath the bullet points 'Never stays sad for long' and 'Tends to act on impulse'._

"This isn't a dream." She says out loud.

Before her is one of the Hearts she's seen nearly her whole life. One of the Hearts in Sora.

But if this boy's Heart is supposed to be inside Sora…what did that make this place?

What did that make this island? What did it make the door in the cavern, and the room it opened into?

Kairi looked away from the boy long enough to inspect the room they were in. It was a circular chamber, all white and brightly lit from a light that didn't have any known origin. Above her and the sleeping boy stretched a ceiling that seemed to have no end. And all along the walls repeated a pattern that perfectly matched the silver badge on his clothes, Kairi realized—The symbol of a geometric heart with a four-pointed star overlaying the bottom. But whereas the badge looked to be holding together two crossed belts on his torso, the same symbols on the walls had chains coming out of the bottoms of them stretching from the throne lit by alternating pulses of some sort of glowing magic. She had no idea what they were for.

The throne the boy slept on was tall and curved, and just as white as the rest of the room. Its back stretched upwards towards the ceiling, with its armrests just as overly tall. The imperious size of the throne itself made the boy look so much smaller within it, though Kairi estimated that he was likely taller than her. And beyond the throne, she could just barely see the outline of another door.

She walked around the throne, noting how the boy didn't even stir at the sound of her footsteps, and tried to push the door open. It didn't work. And even with all of Kairi's strength—which wasn't paltry, she'd managed to beat Tidus, Sora, and Selphie in arm-wrestling contests several times before—it still didn't budge one bit. Kairi wondered if the glowing chains on the symbols on the door had anything to do with that.

She angled her head around the throne to inspect the doorway she came in through. It was perfectly nondescript, no chains or symbols or even a doorframe around it. Kairi could see the other side of the door, the one that was on the inside of the room, was composed of the rest of the wall as if it were meant to be concealed when it was closed. Beyond the archway, she could see the inside of the cave and hear the dimmed rustling of the ocean coming from it.

Kairi looked down to the boy.

"Hello?" She tried, waving a hand in front of his face.

He didn't wake. Kairi then tried nudging his shoulder slightly, but that didn't work either. Whatever slumber the boy was in was deep.

The thought reminded her of Sora. And with that reminder came a pang of desolation, of loneliness, as she remembered how she could see her but not talk to her. As she remembered her body lying abandoned in a forgotten alley somewhere, able to see but not speak, not walk, not get away.

Not able to get back home.

 _Panicking won't solve anything,_ Kairi had told herself that first time she'd tried to get back to her body. She wasn't panicking anymore, but now she just wanted to cry. Kairi knew that wouldn't solve anything either.

"I hoped you could talk to me," She said. "Maybe you'd know what this place is. Or at least I wouldn't go crazy from being isolated here."

"Well, I guess that's not true anymore," Kairi amended. "At least you're here now. Even if you're asleep. Maybe I could talk to you instead?"

She looked to him for a response before realizing he wasn't able to give any.

And between the two of them, in that large chamber where the boy slept and the girl sat, no sound was made but for the quiet rustling of the waves from the open doorway.

But even with no reply, this time she didn't feel alone in the strange place she had found herself in.

* * *

 **SORA**

While Donald steered the gummi ship through space back towards Traverse Town, she stared out the windows and watched the small colorful silhouette of Wonderland get farther and farther away. Beside her, Goofy and Jiminy were forlornly doing the same.

"We're not finding much, are we?" Sora said, as the world of Wonderland became nothing more than a tiny pink star amongst countless others.

"Nope," Goofy mumbled. "Gawrsh, no news on the king or any idea where Alice went."

"Nothing about those reports, either." Jiminy reminded them.

"Or my mom, or Riku, or Kairi."

All three of them sighed in their seats. In front of them, Donald grumbled from the pilot's chair.

"Oi, you can't carry on to Sora about 'no frowning faces' and then start sighing yourself!" He said.

"But Donald," Goofy asked, "While we're looking for people, another someone disappears! Don't you think it's pretty fishy? And on top of that, there's been one of those really big, mean heartless in every world we've been to so far!"

"We've only been to two worlds so far!" Donald said as he angled the ship around the oncoming asteroid field.

"That's true," Sora agreed with Goofy, "And Leon and Yuffie said that before their world fell heartless started appearing and people went missing too. Could that have anything to do with what's going on?"

"That's what I was thinking!" Jiminy piped up from his miniscule seat on the dashboard, "From what you've mentioned, the heartless in Wonderland were stronger than the ones in Traverse Town, especially that one with the batons you encountered at the end. Maybe that means we're getting closer to the truth."

"Maybe," Sora said, but didn't have much confidence in his words. The more she got entrenched in this whole mess, the more it felt like she was just drifting away from being able to accomplish the bigger goals she set out to accomplish in favor of dealing with all of the immediate issues of heartless and helping the people that were suffering because of them. Not that that wasn't also important, but it was frustrating to only be able to treat the symptoms and not the syndrome. If she'd only had those reports, at the very least, maybe there'd be a way to get rid of the heartless at the source and bring back the worlds that had fallen to them. And bring back her home.

Then again, it wasn't as if this _whole_ journey was pointless so far. Every heartless she and her friends defeated was one less heartless that could hurt someone or turn them into a heartless too. And on top of that, she thought with a grin, there was that present the Cheshire Cat had given her, as maddening as he was.

"Whatever happens, we'll be able to handle it," Sora asserted, "Now that I've got magic."

She did a teasing waggle of her fingers at Donald, who only spared her a withering glance before refocusing on the asteroid field. Sora cracked up at that.

"Which you've only used _once_ so far for good!" Donald scolded over her peals of laughter. "You're much more interested in just using it to make the gummi ship floor into a skating rink than in using it to fight!"

"C'mon, Donald, that was only in my own room!"

"It wasn't just in your own room, the ice leaked out into the hallway! I slipped!"

"You're a duck, can't you fly?"

"I'm not that kind of duck!"

"What does that even mean—" Sora started to ask, but was interrupted by Goofy's pointing out towards the windshield.

"Guys! There's a world we haven't tried yet, think the king might be down there?"

They followed his pointing hand to see another world become visible against the starry blackness of outer space. It was verdant green, rife with plant life, but it didn't seem particularly technologically advanced.

"In a backwater place like that?" Donald scoffed. "No way! Let's move on."

Before he could angle the steering away, Sora spoke up.

"Hold on, my mom and friends could be down there. What if one of the reports are there too? Let's just check it out."

"Forget it! We're on an important mission!"

"Just land!"

"No!"

"Come on!"

"Aw, guys, cut it out!" Goofy implored, but neither Sora nor Donald were willing to be swayed.

"Let's just—see what's down there—for five minutes-!" Sora began wrestling the controls away from Donald, who clenched onto them tightly.

"No! Don't touch that!" Donald yelled, as the ship began to careen towards the jungled world at a speedy pace.

"The king could be down there!" Sora argued, "Or Riku! Or Kairi! Or my mom! Maybe even an Ansem Report!"

The world got even closer yet, and the sky outside the windshield was beginning to turn blue. The gummi ship passed through a cloud, leaving raindrops on the windows. Sora was still wrestling for the controls from Donald, and she could hear Goofy and Jiminy going haywire in the background as she scanned the dashboard for any controls she could find useful. A big red button caught her eye, and Sora decided to smack it.

"That's the eject button!" Donald cried. "Ah, who am I kidding, that was probably the only _good_ decision you made in this whole fuss at this point— _Gwa-Waaaaak!"_ And then Donald was vaulted through the now-open cockpit windows as his chair upended him.

And with him, went Goofy and Sora. They sailed off into different directions, each of them screaming on the way out. Even Jiminy was thrown from his tiny chair on the dashboard, but all it managed to do was toss him onto the controls to try and manage the ship as it freefell through the sky.

Sora could hear Goofy crying out as she fell, a faint " _Aaaah-hoohoooey!_ " echoing through the air as they got separated. She could see the gummi ship starting to rock into a position where the nose was lifting into the air as it became righted, and Sora realized Jiminy was probably able to get the gummi ship under control after all.

 _Huh,_ she thought as she fell. _I thought he was too little to use the controls effectively._

From there, Sora plummeted down through the trees with a rustling crash and tumbled through a hole in the roof into a very aged treehouse speckled with moss. Finally, she hit the ground in one piece.

More or less.

"Agh, ow." Sora grumbled as she held a hand to the new bump on her head. "Donald? Goofy?"

She quickly withdrew a potion from her pockets and drank it and felt her wounds from the fall heal themselves up. It wasn't as good as the elixirs, but it made do. Sora looked around at the treehouse she'd landed in.

The first thing Sora noticed was how the air was humid, just like on the islands. But whereas Destiny Islands was comprised of shorelines and the ocean, it appeared that this place was just an endless jungle instead. The treehouse was large, far larger than any she'd ever seen, and old, its boards a withered brown and small plant growth all over the interior. Above, a couple of vines swayed through the air. Mottled sunlight streamed through some of the broken windows and the hole in the roof to leave gleaming striated patterns on the floor.

A footfall and a low growl from behind her made Sora quickly turn around.

And with that she came face to face with a great leopard lunging from the balcony straight for her.

Sora barely summoned her keyblade in time to catch the leopard's open maw, and she terrifyingly watched as its enormous fangs clamped down on the metal where her hand or head could have been. It swiped, and with its strength Sora flew towards the closest wall of the treehouse, feeling her back collide with the wreckage of crates with a gasp.

She scrambled to her feet, flinching at the pain in her neck, and raised the keyblade into her familiar sparring position.

And with that, both she and the leopard lunged.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

It felt like such a familiar sight, watching someone snooze like this, that she couldn't help but laugh.

"You're just like a friend of mine. Her name's Sora. She'd sleep a lot too. Anywhere: In the middle of class, or homework, or even whenever us and our friends would be on the play island doing stuff that didn't bore her, because school sure did. It would happen all the time, like Riku—that's another friend of mine and Sora's—would be wandering around looking for her to have another spar and more often than not she'd be sleeping on the shore, or the little beach shack, or wherever."

It was such a familiar sight that whenever Kairi returned here from checking on her body or seeing whatever Sora was up to that she half-expected to see her friend sprawled out on the beach. And every time she didn't see her, or Riku, or any of the other kids waiting for her on this play island that wasn't the real play island, her Heart squeezed painfully a little. But Kairi didn't mention that part.

"It made her mom worried at one point, 'cuz she thought maybe Sora was narcoleptic or something, even though Sora could stay awake just fine when something that interested her was going on. But she got the tests and everything done, consulted doctors, and everything came back normal. Nothing was wrong, she was just a lazy bum." Kairi snorted to herself.

"I'd wake her up a lot by just staring at her. She has really good instincts, you see, so more often than not Sora would wake right up whenever she sensed someone staring at her. That ability was probably honed from years of trying to convince teachers she wasn't trying to sleep in class. She and Riku would have staring contests a lot, even before…even before I arrived on Destiny Islands, they'd be competing on everything. Riku would win spars and feats of strength more often than not, but Sora never lost a staring contest with him."

She added, "It was great. Here was this guy that singlehandedly hauled all of the logs around when we were building the raft, who could beat Tidus, Selphie, and Wakka in a three-on-one spar, reduced to rubbing his eyes like crazy barely a minute into a staring contest. And he'd just go 'Agh, how are you _doing_ that?' and she'd only laugh at it. Once Riku managed to last close to a minute and a half, but he still managed to lose, and needed eye drops afterward too."

Kairi could see it now: She and Sora were twelve, and Riku thirteen, and the three of them were assembled on Sora's bed in her room after a long summer day of sparring and running around. It was before Riku got those gloves he wore to keep splinters out of his hands from the old wooden swords he and Sora used all the time, so his fingers were pink and raw from dueling that day.

' _Seriously, though, how are you able to do that?' Riku had asked._

 _Sora shrugged. 'I dunno, I just kinda zone out and think about other stuff until you blink. It helps that you never take long.' She finished with a snicker._

' _Figures that you'd just zone out, knowing you I thought you figured out a way to sleep with your eyes open and just did that to win.'_

' _I wish!' Sora exclaimed. 'Maybe it's from all the experience with Kairi staring me awake.' She turned to her then, and asked, 'Speaking of, Kai, you wanna have a go? We haven't had a staring contest in a while.'_

 _She could feel the corner of her mouth turn upward._

' _Sure. What was the score again? Five to seven?'_

' _Six to seven! I won last time.'_

' _Got it.' Kairi replied, and so the contest began._

"I miss them."

Kairi got no response to her words and didn't expect any. She sat back and listened to the quiet breezes coming in through the open door.

"It's weird. I've been separated from Sora and Riku only for…two days? Three? I don't know anymore." She sighed.

"But it feels like an eternity has gone on since then. I don't know where I am, or how I ended up here, not really. This place, outside of this room anyways, looks exactly like the play island from my home, but there's no birds or insects or even the main island out along the horizon. Just the ocean and the sky as far as you can see."

"It's a perfect replica apart from all those things. It has the shaky scaffolding on the far side of the play island that Riku and Sora would run along in races. Right down to the one board that would snap if you put too much weight on it."

Kairi paused.

"It even has the weird door in the cave that's on the real play island too."

She sat quietly for a moment, thinking back to that night on the play island when everything went wrong. It felt impossible that all of that happened only a few days ago, but it was the truth.

"The first time I ever saw the door was years ago. It was around two years after I first arrived on the islands, I was six. Riku and Sora called the cave the door was in their 'inner sanctum' and said I couldn't ever tell anyone else about it. You know, normal kid stuff. None of us ever told anyone about it of course, but three years later Selphie would wander in on the place herself while she was exploring, and then the secret was out. But for a while there, the cave was only ours. Having that little piece of the world to ourselves was special to us."

"Sometimes we'd have sleepovers in the cave, sometimes we'd do nothing in there that day but draw on the walls. But Riku was always interested in that door. It didn't seem like anything to me—not until a couple of days ago, anyways—but I think that thing talked to him. Or maybe not talked to him literally but messed with his head a little. But it didn't become apparent that it did anything but in the past month or so, really just the past few weeks at most."

"He'd always go 'There's something about that door' and we'd always go 'Riku, it's just a door, chill' or some variant of that, and we'd carry on our work on the raft, but he'd keep looking back at it. Or even just watch in the direction of where the cave was."

"I thought maybe the Darkness had gotten to him finally and made him crazy or something—He'd always had a problem with his Darkness, I could just see in his Heart even when he said things were fine, that nothing's wrong—But then, that last night on the play island, I started blacking out and eventually ended up in front of the door. And I could swear that thing was talking to me in my head too."

She gave a humorless smile. "Well, more like screaming really. It was asking me for help, calling me 'Princess', asking me to give it back its Light, but I had no idea what it was talking about. What does it mean when your legs know what to do but your brain doesn't? I didn't have any clue, I still don't. When I found you I was hoping you might know, but you're just stuck on this place with me. Asleep."

Kairi shook her head. "Sorry, that might have come out a little grouchy. What I mean is, it's nice to know I'm not alone here. That I have someone to talk to. I just wish I had someone that could talk back, you know?"

"Anyways, I couldn't figure it out in time, and by that point Sora had found her way to me and whatever she was going to do next was interrupted by the door opening up. By itself! And if things couldn't get any crazier, so much of this Darkness started bursting out and the next thing I knew I was hearing this familiar voice say these way too familiar words and I was seeing myself in the third person. And then I woke up here."

She looked up at him, not expecting a response but asking anyways.

"Was that how you ended up here too?"

* * *

 **SORA**

Before Sora could fight, before the leopard could sink its teeth into her, a figure burst in through the rafters and interfered with the leopard's lunge with the help of a spear.

The leopard gave a fitful growl at the man, who only stared back with his spear at the ready. Sora looked back and forth between them, the air stiff with tension like the moment before the first clap of a thunderstorm.

But what happened next wasn't a fight like she had expected. The leopard instead chose to turn and flee, throwing itself out of the closest window and into the blinding brightness of the day where it quickly disappeared from view in the canopy of trees down below the treehouse Sora had landed in.

"Sabor, danger." The man warned in halted syllables, as Sora slowly turned away from the window where she had watched the leopard escape.

He was tall, with blue-gray eyes that never seemed to focus properly or looked at anything for long. She saw how his gaze darted around the treehouse, like he was continuously searching for more predators like the leopard that could be about.

Sora got the sense, looking at him, that this guy must have been abandoned at one point. His hair was long, matted into dreadlocks, and he wore no normal clothes like she'd ever seen, his attire comprised of a tanned pelt wrapped around his waist that went halfway towards his knees. It was as if this man had never been part of human society.

She thought, _what does 'sabor' mean?_ Sora knew 'danger' well enough, maybe he was referring to the leopard that tried to ambush her?

"Is 'Sabor' the leopard?" Sora asked, but the man only gave her a blank look. "Um…thank you."

"'Thank you'." The man imitated her, less in a mocking way and more in that same halting way that made her think he was trying to figure out what she said. Was this guy okay?

"Huh? Er, um, what is this place?" She tried asking.

"This place, this place." He repeated.

This was getting weirder by the minute.

"Oka-a-y, where did the others go?" She clarified, upon seeing him give her that same blank look, "I mean, I got separated from my friends. Have you seen them?"

He quirked his head in confusion.

" _Friends_." Sora enunciated slowly.

This time, the man straightened somewhat in recognition of the word. "Friends!" He echoed excitedly.

"Right, my friends!" Sora asserted. "There's two of 'em. The loud one is Dona—No, never mind."

 _Donald's probably busy right now being a grump,_ she thought to herself, _I should just focus on finding what I came here for in the first place._

The man returned to looking confused and gave her an inquisitive hum. Sora decided to try again.

"I'm looking for my friends, Riku and Kairi." She said.

"Look for Ree-coo, friends?" He asked, "Kai-ree, friends?"

"Right!" Sora verified. His pronunciation was weird, but it seemed he had an idea of what she was talking about this time, she thought excitedly. Maybe this could bode well.

"Friends here."

"Really?!"

The man nodded excitedly and tried to communicate something else with a tumble of syllables Sora didn't recognize.

"Huh?"

He repeated himself, but Sora still wasn't sure what he was trying to say.

"I don't really understand, but…show me!" Sora was desperate for a clue to her friends' whereabouts, saying, "Take me to Riku and Kairi!"

This time, it was the man's turn to enunciate slowly.

"Tarzan." He said, gesturing to himself. It seemed he was introducing himself finally. "Tarzan go."

She blinked.

"And I'm Sora," She pointed a thumb at herself, "Tarzan go, Sora go go!" She tried to imitate his body language in hopes of some sort of understanding.

It seemed to work. He nodded and began to shuffle towards the doors of the treehouse, and Sora noticed he walked with a sort of stagger not unlike a gorilla.

Tarzan walked out on the balcony and vaulted over the railing, landing on one of the wooden balusters that held up a long ream of netting under the treehouse. And with one unexpectedly graceful movement he slid down the baluster and landed on a tree trunk that leaned over far below.

And with that, Sora excitedly followed. Her landing on the tree trunk wasn't as practiced as Tarzan's, and she nearly slipped on the slippery moss that coated the bark and made it perfect for sliding in the first place, but she managed.

The first thing she noticed about this tree trunk they slid down on was _enormous._ It was wide enough for both of her, Donald, and Goofy to slide down side by side if they were here, and long enough to wind and twist its way through nearly the entire forest. Sora could only imagine how vast the tree must have been when it was alive and upright. Deftly they leapt and ducked around branches that grew over the trunk, and Sora could see Tarzan several paces ahead going around the obstacles first.

In between dodging plant growth, Sora savored the feeling of the sun on her again. The sunlight, the warm air, even the sounds of birdcalls and insects' cries made it just like she was back on Destiny Islands again if she closed her eyes.

She could imagine doing this with Riku, or even Kairi maybe if they managed to convince her. Kairi was definitely the more cautious one, but even she could be persuaded to try things from time to time if they weren't over the top 'daredevil stunts', as her mom called them. And Kairi _definitely_ came up with the best antics when it came to prank wars.

Sora sighed sadly as she ducked under another branch. She missed them.

If she did manage to reunite with Riku and Kairi here, she could only guess at their reactions to what she'd seen. About meeting talking animals, fighting heartless, learning magic. Her mom's hair would probably turn as silver as Riku's if she saw the stuff Sora got up to so far. Maybe she'd just have to leave some parts out.

"Note to self: See if I can use that freezing magic to make ice cream." Sora muttered as she saw a clearing coming up at the end of the tree trunk. That would be a great way to show off her magic if it worked.

She grinned as another thought came to her: Sora would definitely win every spar from now on.

They both landed in the clearing, and Sora saw crates and tents everywhere. It only made her more excited—Riku and Kairi must be here! She wasn't sure where all of this scientific equipment came from, as it seemed much more advanced than their schooling so far, but maybe other people were here too. She couldn't wait to see her friends again, maybe even her mom.

"Jane!" Tarzan called before stumbling into the closest tent, marked with a globe sitting on a crate outside. It didn't look to have any landforms Sora could recognize.

Sora followed him in and saw that the only occupant was a young woman busy fiddling with a machine. "Tarzan!" She beamed, looking up, and then noticed Sora. "And who is this?"

"Uh, hi there, I'm—"

"Oh, you speak English!" Jane enthused, clearly delighted with the prospects of meeting someone else with a complete vocabulary. Sora couldn't help but wonder if she only had Tarzan to talk to all day. Jane bent down to see Sora at her eye level. "So then, obviously you're not related to Tarzan…Are you here to study the gorillas? An intern, perhaps?"

"Highly doubtful." A new voice replied, and they turned to watch a man with a shotgun stride into the tent. Sora noticed he kept his finger on the trigger. Behind him were two people Sora recognized.

"Sora!" Goofy cried, and both he and Donald ran to her.

"Donald! Goofy!" She cheered, grasping hands with them both.

And then she remembered, and she could tell that Donald remembered too: The fight on the gummi ship, crash landing here. And with that, both Sora and Donald let go and crossed their arms as they determinedly looked away from each other.

"Aw shucks, you guys," Goofy said, looking to them both distraughtly, "We're all together again! Can't we work together?"

"I don't know," Donald scoffed, " _Can_ we?"

"Not with this guy I can't," Sora said with a stubborn pout, "Goofy, where's the gummi ship?"

"Why, so you can crash it again?" Donald cut in before Goofy could say anything, and Sora fumed.

"Oh gawrsh, don't start fighting again! Let's make the most of this!" Goofy pleaded and turned to her, "Jiminy's got it, it's not too far from here."

"Gummi ship…?" Jane trailed off questioningly as she looked between the trio.

"Disregard them, they're just a circus of clowns." The man folded his arms, tucking his rifle under them. Sora noticed how Tarzan kept glancing to where the muzzle was aimed at with his forehead wrinkling. It wasn't aimed at anything at the moment, but he remained worried.

The man threw over his shoulder as he wandered out of the tent, "They're not much use for hunting gorillas."

"We're supposed to be studying them, Mr. Clayton! Not hunting them!" Jane said as she put her hands on her hips. "This is research!"

But sadly, it didn't seem as if the man had heard her. Clayton strolled away from view.

Jane sighed as she turned back to them with a trying smile, her skirt swaying with the movement.

"Well, the more the merrier! Do make yourselves at home," She looked to the tea kettle readying on the camp fire outside the tent and pursed her lips. "Our tea service got a little, ah, crunched by the gorillas first wandering onto our camp, but there should be enough cups to go around for all of us! I'm Jane, and that was Mr. Clayton, or just Clayton for short if you prefer. He's here to navigate me and my father through the jungle on our study expedition. Do excuse his demeanor, he's simply rather set in his ways, if you will. I presume you're Sora?"

"Yep!"

Jane's smile became a little more genuine. "Lovely to meet you! And may I presume the two of you are—what was it—Donald and Goofy? I hadn't ever seen any fellows look like you before."

"I'm Goofy, and that's Donald!" He said, and Sora noticed Donald's conflicted look at Jane's words with a small smirk.

"I guess I'm not the one disrupting the world order this time, huh Donald?" She said with a nudge, and Donald gave an angry quack at that. But before they could rile up another argument, Goofy cut in quickly.

"Sora, look what we found. Look at this," He said, holding out a gloved hand to her. She could see a small bright red oddly shaped block cupped in his hands.

"What's that?"

"A gummi block! It's the same stuff used to build our ship."

Her brows raised. "So that means…"

"…The king could be here." Donald finished her next words. "So we gotta stay here for a while and work together to look for him. _For now._ " He concluded harshly.

"Fine." Sora spat. "I'll let you tag along. _For now_." She echoed.

"'Let you tag along'?! Why you little-!"

"Were you looking for someone too, Sora?" Jane cut in, and Goofy gave her a grateful look that Jane gave a knowing nod to. It appeared as though Tarzan had managed to fill her in on their earlier encounter while she and Donald and Goofy were talking. "A uh, Ree-coo and Kai-ree?"

"Yeah! Riku and Kairi, they're my friends. I'm looking for my mom too. I thought Tarzan said they'd be here, but I guess I misunderstood. I wish I could actually talk to him, though, to make sure." Sora frowned.

"Tarzan was raised in this jungle by the gorillas. Communicating with him still isn't easy, but he's learning." Jane said as she began to move around the tent and assemble various objects.

"So he was speaking in 'gorilla' back there?"

"Indeed." She replied as she began piecing components together and sliding a lens in place. "The first time he made those vocalizations, me and my father were ecstatic! It was evidence of his theory of non-anthropocentric sociolinguistics, you see, that gorillas formed their own language arising from a need to communicate more complex ideas as symptom of their humanlike intelligence, perhaps even a sign of impending anthropogenesis—Oh dear, my apologies, I have a tendency to prattle on about my studies. Dear Tarzan here does his best to listen but I know I must be boring to you three."

"Well, it's, um, it's alright." Sora tried, trying not to let on that a good three-fourths of what Jane said went over her head.

"Why don't we try this?" Jane suggested as she flicked a match, using it to light a candle before setting the now-completed machine carefully on top of it. It looked a bit like a super old camera to Sora, and she watched as it projected an image of a gorilla on the far wall. Tarzan went over to where the image was projected and imitated the gorilla's squatting pose with his knuckles on the floor. "Whoops, that got left in there from last time. I was going to say we should show Tarzan some slides and see if any of them match that word for him."

"Wait, so you have pictures of Riku and Kairi?"

"Well, no," Jane said, shuffling together some slides, "These are simply stock pictures of simple subjects, a house, a chair, that sort of thing, but we can see if Tarzan recognizes any of them with what he was trying to say." She popped the first picture in, and a picture of two people sword fighting with épées showed up on the screen.

Tarzan had no reaction. Next slide, a man presenting a bouquet to a woman, and again no reaction. Neither did he have any reaction to a gorilla reared back and beating its chest, beyond imitating its posture, and he didn't seem to recognize the ship either. And then a picture of a castle showed up on the screen.

This time, it was Sora that had the reaction. Donald looked over, seeing her confused expression.

"What's wrong, Sora?"

 _(A flower field stretched on almost as far as the eye could see. Not that she could see much, as she was still so small that even the rosebushes seemed to tower above her, their heavy perfume carrying on the breeze. An elderly woman hummed as she tended to the weeds in the begonias' beds. And far beyond them both, at the edge of the garden, stood a castle whose spires seemed to reach for the sky.)_

"What? Um, nothing." She shook her head. "I'm fine."

 _What was that?_ She thought. That couldn't be her memory, she'd never seen a castle in person, only in pictures in story books. There weren't any castles on the islands.

But the picture seemed so familiar.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

"That castle…" She trailed off, as she came to again on the floor of the room.

Kairi checked in for only a moment, just to make sure her body hadn't been disturbed and to see how things were with Sora, and it turned out she came in at the perfect time. She didn't dare keep watching beyond that image of the castle that appeared lest she risk disturbing parts of herself that didn't need to be disturbed.

"I guess I haven't mentioned much about how I ended up on Destiny Islands in the first place, huh?" She looked to the sleeping boy.

Kairi let her gaze rest on the walls as she remembered.

"There's not much to say on wherever I was before beyond the bad parts I keep getting flashbacks of. I just remember flowers of all kinds and tending to them with my grandmother. And there was," Her voice faltered for a moment, "There was a castle, I guess now."

"I remember being happy, once. That feeling when you're so little that nothing's on your mind and nothing really matters beyond the simple things." Kairi sighed.

"It's weird how everything gets so much more complicated as you grow up. Or maybe what's around you doesn't change at all, but you do. You start overthinking everything. And these…these snapshots of what you've experienced but can't remember start leaving stains on everything you see."

She dragged one hand over her eyes and thought back to her first spring on the islands.

"I wish I knew why lilacs make me cry."

"It's not an allergy thing, if you were wondering. It's just…an ingrained response I guess. It's gotten a little easier over time but not by much. I guess that's how it works: You think you're starting to be able to handle it and then the grief just pulls you under again and you think you're drowning."

"The first foster home I was sent to was about a week after I first woke up on the islands. They were this older couple, two women who had like a million dogs and they were so kind to me. The ladies already had three other foster children under their roof, who were on the permanent residence filing and were already set to be adopted by them at that point, but here those two were still trying to help kids like me when they could."

"I was there one April for about two weeks. A few days in, one of the women came outside to get the paper and found me clutching to the lilac bushes in the front yard crying my eyes out. She kept asking me what was wrong, was I okay, but I couldn't really put into words what I was feeling then. I still can't."

Kairi went quiet again for several minutes. The boy in the chair continued to sleep, giving no indicators of any possibility he was hearing her. But it didn't matter.

"Neither of them was sure what to do after that, they weren't sure what was going on because I couldn't really figure out how to tell them anything, but they did what they could to make me comfortable. I never forgot that: How people can still manage to be kind even when it feels like everything is falling apart. I took that to heart."

"After that I was shuffled around from home to home. None of the arrangements in the first year lasted long because I was on the impermanent filing, since I guess the foster system thought there was still a chance my parents would come back for me again. They were all nice people: For about a month I was with another elderly couple who loved old westerns and musicals and the man taught me a little bit about how to play the piano. I was never good at anything beyond playing the opening notes to 'Chopsticks', but a couple of days later the woman showed me how to crochet and I loved it. She taught me how to do a bunch of other crafts, like friendship bracelets and charms with seashells, and I still use a lot of what I learned from her even now. At the end when I was leaving to go to my next assigned home, she gave me a small knitted octopus plushie that I still have on my bedroom shelf."

Kairi remembered the other families she stayed with after that—the family that ran a bakery whose home always smelled like lemon furniture polish and freshly baked bread. And then the elderly woman whose long white hair was still streaked with grey-black and who had let Kairi try riding her motorcycle in the sidecar a few times. But whenever she landed in a home with lilacs, which wasn't too often, but sometimes—Kairi remembered the pain all over again.

"I heard a lot of horror stories in that time from other kids who were in the system like me. About awful foster families and homes, and I was terrified. I thought that would happen to me, too. But I kept being moved around, and not a single one of the homes was bad. And eventually I felt so selfish that my first reaction to hearing those things was 'what about me?' Here were these people who had such awful luck compared to me and here I was focused on myself. So I remembered what those two ladies in my first home taught me, to be compassionate. To be one of the helpers when everything feels like it's crashing down around you."

"I'm not going to lie: When I was told I was being put on long-term care, in the hopes of finding a place that would take me in permanently…it stung. A piece of me was still hoping that maybe by then my parents would find me and we could be together again, even as improbable as it seemed."

"I guess the reason why I wanted to find my real parents so much, even when I had other families that took me in, was because I really just wanted to find a place where I belonged. A Kairi-shaped space just for me, in a loving home that was mine with a family that was mine."

* * *

 **SORA**

"Ah- _yipe!_ " Goofy cried out, as he fell from his vine yet again, and landed in the hippos' lagoon with a splash.

Dr. Archimedes Q. Porter—or simply Dr. Porter, for short—gave him a thumbs up from his matching spot in the water.

"Ten out of ten landing, dear chum!" He cheered. "I must say that was a perfect swan dive, mine was more akin to the graceless members of the _Anatidae_ family. Perhaps a barnacle goose!"

"Daddy, would you _please_ keep up?" Jane yelled from above, still clinging desperately onto her vine to try and follow Tarzan. "We've got to get to this Kerchak fellow to find the gorillas' nesting grounds! We can't dawdle!"

"Come on, Goofy! Don't risk getting caught by heartless alone, keep up." Donald used his magic to slow his falls somewhat, so that his swinging from vine to vine came much more easily than it did to anyone else.

Sora looked on at this with a small measure of envy as she tried to swing back and forth on her vine to gain leverage to reach another. "Gee, Donald, can't you teach me how to do that spell? Whatever you're doing?"

"And risk you using it for shenanigans? No way!"

 _After the test with the slides back at camp had concluded uneventfully, to Sora's chagrin, Clayton had come back to suggest that clues to the people the trio was looking for could be found at the gorillas' nesting grounds, if not perhaps even find Riku, Kairi, or the king or her mother._

 _The suggestion seemed to be a point of contention for the camp's original occupants: Before the group's arrival Tarzan had refused to risk it, and Jane and Dr. Porter had left it at that to allow the gorillas their privacy. But Clayton wouldn't let the matter rest._

 _But now, with Sora, Donald, and Goofy there, Tarzan looked as though he was mulling it over. They could see his eyes turn to the keyblade still in Sora's hand, and then to the rifle Clayton carried constantly, and then back to the keyblade again. And finally, Tarzan agreed_.

" _Tarzan, are you sure?" Jane asked with a small measure of awe._

" _Tarzan go see Kerchak."_

" _Kerchak?"_

" _He must be the leader. Perfect. I'll go along as an escort." Clayton grinned. "After all, the jungle is a dangerous place."_

And now here they were, trying to swing from vine to vine to the area where Tarzan could go meet Kerchak. Maybe they'd be able to see if anyone they were searching for was there.

The idea of seeing her friends again, her mom, in the middle of a place whose climate reminded her so much of Destiny Islands made her Heart nearly burn with anticipation. The calls of the cicadas and birds only made this place's parallels to the islands that much more apparent.

It was great to be on this whole adventure, but it didn't stop Sora from missing the old life she knew.

Beyond the edge of the group, she could see Clayton dodging in and out of the branches, just outside of Goofy and Dr. Porter's path. He didn't manage well with using the vines, with only one hand available as the other was busy keeping a grip on the rifle, but Clayton didn't lose pace. And then, Sora blinked, and he disappeared yet again.

"There he goes again!" She whispered to Donald, who had been keeping an eye on him too.

He ruffled his feathers angrily. "I don't trust him. Where does he keep going?"

"I don't know," Sora replied, "Earlier I could have sworn I caught sight of that leopard that I fought earlier, Sabor, I think Tarzan called it, on one of the branches. But I looked again, and it was gone. I keep seeing flashes of yellow out of the corner of my eye though."

"I don't like this. Clayton's up to something, maybe that leopard's got some sort of a deal with him."

"Really?" Sora swung to another vine and felt a small thrill when she caught it. She didn't want to risk falling again. "I didn't get the feeling when I fought it earlier that it was…well, a _thinking_ leopard or anything like that. I thought it was just a wild animal."

"I think a lot more of the animals here are thinking animals than we realize," Donald said as he swiped his staff and made himself float gently to another vine, "Me and Goofy saw a gorilla earlier and it had enough sense to leave that gummi block for us."

"Really?"

Donald nodded. "Seems to me that they might have an idea of what our mission is. Not just finding the king or those reports or your friends, but fighting heartless. Locking keyholes. Tarzan was looking at the keyblade earlier."

"Yeah, I noticed that too." Sora said, "That might be why he agreed to take us to Kerchak now rather than before with just the Porters, Tarzan might need us for help with something."

At this, the conversation ended as they saw Jane and Tarzan alighting on one of the trees' boughs up ahead. Upon reaching them, Sora saw that he was looking to one of the distant branches, where one of the largest gorillas Sora had ever seen sat, with a slightly smaller gorilla at his side. One of them had to be Kerchak. Behind them she could see Goofy and Dr. Porter getting a foothold on the bough, still dripping slightly from their crash landing in the hippos' lagoon. Sora hoped the bough didn't break under everyone's weight.

She also noticed Clayton was still absent.

Tarzan looked to the two gorillas with a plaintive expression. The larger gorilla stared back gravely, but the smaller gorilla had an almost…melancholy look?

Maybe Donald was right, these animals really could be smarter than any of the group realized.

Tarzan began speaking to the larger gorilla with more of those disjointed syllables she'd heard from him earlier, though she could recognize the name 'Kerchak'. He spoke to them primarily in a staccato of grunts and murmurs combined with Tarzan gesticulating wildly with his arms and legs. In the corner Sora could see Jane and Dr. Porter frantically scribbling notes into their journals. Jane appeared to be sketching something.

At the end there was an apprehensive pause when Tarzan finished, and the smaller gorilla looked to the larger gorilla for their response.

"Uh, did you get any of that?" Goofy bent over to ask Donald and Sora.

"No." Donald said.

"Kerchak…" Tarzan trailed off, watching the larger gorilla stalk off. Behind him, the smaller gorilla followed, but she noticed it kept its gaze on Tarzan, and looked regretful.

"Does Tarzan, um…" Sora looked to the Porters, who were now watching the gorillas stride away. "Does he know them? I know he knows Kerchak, but does he, like, _know them_ know them?"

"We know he was raised in this jungle by the gorillas, when he was presumably abandoned here as a small child." Jane contemplated.

"His motor skills and posture make me think he was raised by the gorillas since at least toddlerhood, if not infancy." Dr. Porter added, "Tarzan's demeanor when we first encountered him was quite like the accounts written of Victor of Aveyron, another feral child from some centuries before. Those gorillas may be the only family Tarzan has ever had."

Abandoned at a young age in an unknown place, trying to find acceptance and belonging in an adoptive family when his own parents never came back for him for whatever reason…Tarzan was quite like someone else Sora knew.

Kairi.

" _My home is here on the islands with you guys." Kairi said when Sora had asked if she'd ever wondered about where she had originally come from. "I'm happy here."_

 _Sora remembered how they all pondered over what her parents must have been like in the late nights of sleepovers and lazy autumn days. Spring breaks where there wasn't much to do. Her and Riku wondered if Kairi's parents were like some daring souls who had died tragically and heroically, like so many of the orphan protagonists in their books and shows. If her parents were some sort of adventurers or magicians whose journey had gone awry._

 _But maybe Kairi's parents were just ordinary people in their own right, even if they'd managed to get their daughter to Destiny Islands in a less than ordinary way. Either way, none of the kids ever found out, because Kairi's parents never came back for her._

Tarzan turned to them, then, upset.

"Kala mother. Kerchak father? Not father?" He shook his head sadly. "Kerchak not say. Tarzan not know. Tarzan here all life."

"Oh dear," Jane sighed as she gripped her notepad.

But whatever any of them were planning to say next was interrupted by the bang of a distant gunshot, and everyone straightened immediately.

"Clayton!" Tarzan shouted.

"Oh no, he must have found a gorilla!" Dr. Porter cried, "He kept insisting on pursuing the poor creatures!"

"That liar! How could he do such a thing?!" Jane spat angrily. "We have to hurry, he could have found more!"

And with that, they ran back for the vines, desperate to make their way back to camp.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

"The day I met the people I'd call 'Mom' and 'Dad', I remember staring out the window of my caseworker's car hoping it would rain. Preferably a thunderstorm." Kairi gave a small laugh. "But even a small drizzle would have been enough."

"It was a beautiful day that day, arguably a good omen if you believe that sort of thing, but I was sad from being shuffled to long-term care and it felt like the world was just making a joke out of it by making the weather so nice."

"The final temporary home I was placed with was the one I was picked up from to be placed with my mom and dad by my caseworker personally. Usually it's just some cab service they call for you—sometimes they have a shuttle—and they'll come by the foster home with a letter discussing the new home's details and a social worker to escort you after giving advance notice, which can sometimes just be two days before." Kairi shook her head. "The foster system is a little inefficient, like a lot of government stuff. But anyways, I remember being surprised to see my caseworker there personally."

"She was so excited. I remember her being a really cheerful lady, almost always optimistic, like Sora, but that day it was even more so. It was almost overwhelming. She just kept going 'Today's the day! Today's the day!', but I couldn't bring myself to be very excited at all. By then, I still remembered the horror stories I heard of bad foster homes and I couldn't help but wonder when my luck would run out. I was trying to be optimistic and trying to be compassionate to those whose luck had turned bad, but you can't help but be afraid a little bit. I had to roll the dice so often."

 _Kairi hoped that whoever she was paired with next, that they'd be good. That she'd like them. The one ray of light to her living situation so far was that her luck hadn't failed her yet, and Kairi took solace in that._

 _It wasn't long after that that the drive came to an end, the car giving a low rumble as it was pulled into the side of the street and turned off. She looked out the window._

 _It was the house Kairi would be staying in for the foreseeable future. The structure itself looked cheery, the siding painted mint green and the front door a navy-blue color with the stoop painted to match. The front window had a planter's box at the bottom that was blooming with plants Kairi was too far away from to identify. And along the edge of the yard, close to the fence, gardenia shrubs were planted, though it was too far into the season for them to bloom. And in the driveway, a small silver car was parked._

 _Upon getting out of the vehicle and walking up the driveway with the case worker, Kairi could see the front door open. A man stepped out onto the walkway, a woman that she presumed was his wife close behind._

 _She relaxed her vision for a moment and quieted her mind as best she could. The couple's Hearts were bright, lustrous, with hardly any shadows in sight. Kairi could tell they were hopeful for today and yearned just as much as she did for a sense of familial connection. Maybe this would work out._

" _Hello, hello!" He greeted, "You're Kairi, correct?" And at her nod, he grinned, and the woman excitedly clasped her hands together. "It's great to meet you! Please, come inside. Make yourself at home. I'm Rei Saito, and this is my wife Mari. Please excuse the clutter, campaign season's coming up and I've been running ragged with trying to get reelected." He apologized, as they walked in and looked around._

 _The living room was spacious, though there were what looked to be rolled-up banners in the corner and some papers stacked up on the counter. Otherwise, the place was spotless._

" _Re-elected? For what?" Her caseworker asked, as she opened her manila folder and spread out the contents on the coffee table as the group sat down. Kairi fiddled with the seams of the couch cushion, looking around the room nervously._

" _Yeah," Rei responded, "And as for what, well…You might recognize me as the mayor."_

"For a long time, I was still scared. They were so nice, and mom and dad mentioned later on that they'd had abused kids before me, so they gave me distance and let me come to them on my own." Kairi curled up so that her arms were wrapped around her legs. "I appreciated that. I was less outgoing back then with the long-term families than I was with the short-term families for some reason. Probably because I knew it didn't matter since I wouldn't be there for that long. I guess I wanted to make a good impression on people that were more likely to adopt me and make sure they wouldn't do anything. But none of them did. Do anything, I mean."

"That first day of starting in a new school is never really fun, because foster homes aren't usually even in the same district for a school, so I had a _lot_ of first days where I was the new girl. Imagine a lot of days where everyone was just staring at me, awkward moments where I had to find a different place to sit in class, that sort of thing."

"But the first day of starting in a new school when I'd been placed with mom and dad…it was different that time. I realized it the second I walked in the classroom that morning. Because there, towards the back of the desks, sat Sora. I'd already met her and Riku on that very first morning I woke up on the islands alone, they were the ones that found me. And she recognized me too." Kairi cracked up at this despite herself. "Sora got so excited and started waving me over. And she practically fell out of her chair and said 'I told you we were destined to be friends! I told you!' and she kept talking, and eventually the teacher told her to pipe down or she'd get detention, and Sora finally calmed down."

"It wasn't until that morning when I finally understood what my caseworker meant by 'Today's the day'. I don't think she realized how perfect the assignment ended up being, but I think she had a feeling. When I was first introduced to her she said seeing a good foster family match was like watching a puzzle piece slide into place, and looking back she was exactly right. It really did feel like a puzzle piece was found. A piece for a Kairi-shaped space."

A not-too-old memory this time came to the front of her mind.

"A 'Kairi-shaped space'." She repeated. "I'll be honest. I didn't come up with that one on my own, I stole it from my dad. The day they got approved to adopt me, they had kept it a secret for _months,_ both for the surprise and to make sure I wasn't let down if it ended up falling through. I came home from school that Friday just thinking about homework or whatever and got spooked by the sound of noisemakers and those squawker things you see at birthday parties when I opened the door."

"It was my parents. First thing I noticed was my dad saying, 'It's your birthday!' and I was so confused. And then I saw where my mom had put up an 'It's a girl!' banner as a joke, right underneath my dad's birthday banner he had put up. I had no idea what was going on. And then my mom showed me the papers showing the adoption certificate, with the fancy little seal and everything. My world stopped for several seconds. And then I was just…I was happy. I was so happy."

Kairi wiped at her eyes. "My dad said even before they knew who I was, there was a Kairi-shaped space in their lives. That they knew they wanted me to stay with them since that first day I came to their home with the caseworker. That was the first time I called them mom and dad, and they cried. The rest of the day was a blur, but I remember it was perfect."

"When me and Riku and Sora were working on the raft, and they wondered why I didn't care to try and find out where I came from, who my real parents were…well, that's part of the reason why. So far as I'm concerned, I have a mom and a dad and that's all I really want."

The boy continued to sleep. Kairi shook her head at herself.

"I don't know why I'm telling you all of this. You surely can't even hear me, you're probably just dreaming while all of this is going on. I'd be better off talking to myself probably."

She sighed.

"Why don't I? It's not like I'm incapable of walking out that door and just leaving you alone. I don't really know why I'm even staying in here."

But she didn't leave. For a long while Kairi didn't speak, and the boy continued to sleep on that throne, and so the air was empty of words. The silence was so palpable it nearly rang in her ears, unexpectedly enough.

And not for the first time that day Kairi missed the distant white noise of the wind, the birds, insects, _something_ to distract her from her thoughts. It was so quiet in this room she could almost hear her own pulse.

"Maybe I want someone to talk to. Well, no, I obviously want something to talk to, duh Kairi." She slapped her palm against her head. "It's just…I miss people. I miss my islands. I miss my mom and dad and my friends. I miss home."

"Even though I've been isolated from people for only a few days I miss having someone to talk to, so I guess I just kind of settled on the next best thing. You. Sorry you're stuck in here with me." She gave him a weak smile. "I'm working on finding a way to get out of whatever this place is, but I'm more lost than when I first ended up in here. I'll try and get you out, too, if I ever find a way."

But the quiet went on, and the reality of her situation was too much. Kairi wrapped her arms around herself again and felt her shoulders fall.

* * *

 **SORA**

"Clayton, no." Jane scolded, "Don't do this. I forbid you!"

"On the contrary, Miss Porter," Clayton smugly loaded his rifle and flipped the hammer as he aimed it at the small gorilla he'd cornered, "There is a clause in my contract with you that stipulates I am allowed to ignore a direct order from my employers—as in, _you_ —if such an order infringes upon your or your father's personal safety. Didn't I say the jungle was a dangerous place? Gorillas are certainly considered to be dangerous creatures," He smirked, "The fact they go for three hundred pounds a head back in England is secondary."

"They're not dangerous! The gorillas are intelligent, they mean no harm to anyone that's peaceful!" Dr. Porter cried.

"Yeah, the only reason they'd be dangerous now is because you're trying to provoke them!" Sora agreed, readying her keyblade.

Clayton's disdainful gaze slid onto her. He sneered at her, Donald, and Goofy, who were all ready to attack him.

"Meddling brats should keep to their corners." He spat. "You're lucky ducks and dogs aren't worth much, even if they're clever enough to talk."

And that made Donald practically breathe smoke. Sora could see his reared back staff crackling at the edges with magic of all kinds.

"I'll show you a talking duck!" Donald bristled, " _Firaga!_ "

As the roiling ball of fire shot towards the hunter, scorching the earth where he stood, the battle began. And with it, the stony cliffside on one side of the bamboo clearing burst open to reveal a clear blue sky. Did the hunter do that?

"Goofy!" Sora yelled as she dodged falling boulders, "Get the Porters out of the way! They'll get hurt!"

"Got it!"

"Oh, no," Jane seethed as she planted her feet, "I can keep up with your magic tricks! I'll show that incorrigible brute who the most dangerous creature in the jungle is!"

Sora's eyes widened. "Are you sure?"

"Sure as sugar and right as rain!" Dr. Porter chimed in, "Ol' Archie here may not be a spring chicken anymore, but I know my way 'round a good brawler! Helps that my opponents are usually books, though…"

And before she could respond, a heartless ducked its way into the fray. Sora shot back in surprise and quickly fired off an ice spell before Goofy finished the heartless off.

"What the—there's _heartless_ here?! I didn't see a single one around until now!"

"I think Clayton called them, ahyuk!"

"What?"

"Sabor!" She heard from behind, and Sora whipped around to see Tarzan go toe to toe with a monstrous heartless that was almost as big as the one the trio had seen in Wonderland.

It was no wonder Tarzan had called it 'Sabor'. It looked like some oversized creature derived from a leopard, but it was by no means the same beast she had encountered earlier. Or was it? The hulking cat's acid-yellow paws caused small earthquakes as it moved to Clayton, who climbed on top of it much like how you would ride a horse. And then, the spotted pattern on its fur swelled, and the spots began to take on the colors of the trees, the ground. The group watched with mixed shock and awe as the cat heartless became invisible, and Clayton, still riding atop, appeared as if he were flying.

"Did that cat earlier…" Sora breathed, "Did he turn it into a heartless?"

"He must have!" Donald said as he shot off a lightning spell at where he'd last seen a paw. It landed to reveal a wound that leaked Dark smoke. "Keep hitting the cat, the Darkness'll reveal it!"

At this, Clayton fired off his rifle, and Sora raised her keyblade over her head without thinking. "Don't forget Clayton!"

" _Yipe!_ " Goofy shouted as a bullet ricocheted off his shield.

"Not Clayton! Not Clayton!" Tarzan swung his spear widely, leaving a long black gash in midair as it made contact with the heartless. Sora ecstatically noted it didn't disappear along with the cat, meaning it would work to keep track of where the cat was just as Donald said. Tarzan made the same vocalizations he'd made earlier when first talking to Sora, the ones Jane couldn't translate with the slides.

"What does that mean, 'Not Clayton'?" Sora asked as she begun swinging blindly at several of the smaller heartless around to keep their numbers down. "Did he mean we shouldn't be focusing on him?"

"Absolutely not," Jane grumbled as she smacked away the smaller heartless. "We should definitely focus on him, soon as he's man enough to come down from that beast and face us!" She called out and got a warning shot in response.

The warning shot, however, came very close to clipping Donald in the tailfeathers, and he quacked angrily at Clayton before firing off several bolts of lightning.

This time, the spells started to work, and Sora could see the form of the cheetah heartless a little more clearly as it was framed by the black smoke drifting out of its wounds so far. She did a running dash for the closest paw, and felt the teeth of her keyblade cut deeply into the fur. Sora heard a pained growl at that.

"Keep going, it's working!" She could hear Dr. Porter yell from the other side of the clearing.

Sora ducked under another paw that tried to swipe at her by keeping an eye on the direction of the smoke and aimed blindly above her head to try slicing with the keyblade, and noted the shallow cut she'd made with satisfaction. She could hear Goofy yelping at another paw swiping him successfully and Tarzan giving a war cry as he threw his spear towards one plume of Dark smoke. It missed, and Sora saw as an invisible paw batted away the spear out of reach. That was from that direction, so if that plume of Dark smoke was on another paw, then that meant Sora was…

She'd have one shot, but if this worked it'd at least weaken the cheetah heartless significantly. Sora planted her feet, gritted her teeth, and steeled her grip on her keyblade as she swiped it in the highest arc she could manage above her.

It worked. At least a little. Her ears rang as the heartless gave a pained noise somewhere between a bark and a howl, and she could see several of the others clutching their ears too. Out of the heartless above Sora dripped not blood, but that ashy smoke, thicker than any of the smoke coming out of the other wounds. She did a roll to the side to get out from under the heartless, which by now couldn't sustain its invisibility.

The creature looked close to giving out. The group felt small earthquakes underfoot, and Sora realized after a moment that they weren't coming from the heartless, but rather something else.

Something almost as big.

The bamboo thickets around the clearing parted to reveal the giant gorilla from earlier joining the fray. Kerchak. Around him, smaller gorillas that joined him began to pummel the groups of weaker heartless that remained, the weakest among them finally breaking into that Dark smoke with sickly puff sounds. Slowly, Sora could see the weaker heartless being finished off one by one.

Kerchak dragged his knuckles back and forth on the ground, readying himself for something, and Sora had an idea of what he was about to do.

"Guys, get out of his way!"

Dr. Porter and Donald hurried to the sides, and Sora remembered. Clayton.

She turned to see he was still astride the heartless, and her stomach dropped at the sight of him readying his gun. He had an oily grin on his face at the sight of the gorillas.

Clayton pointed the rifle towards Kerchak and flipped back the hammer to ready it. It was like Sora was watching the horror unfold in slow motion. He placed his pointer finger on the trigger, and then pulled it. The gun did nothing but make a clicking noise.

It didn't work.

The gun was jammed from the last shot.

Sora was so relieved she almost began to laugh, and then she heard a thud so loud it had to have hurt.

It was Kerchak. He had reared back his arm and landed the final blow on the cheetah heartless, who swayed back and forth in place before finally succumbing. And as the heartless fell to the ground, Clayton fell to the clearing floor as well.

The heartless collapsed into Dark smoke, and a sparkling Heart flew towards the sky. Behind her, Sora could see the remaining smaller heartless do the same, breaking down and having their own captive Hearts follow the leader.

The group turned to watch as Clayton uselessly kept trying to fire his rifle, to no avail. With an angry grunt he tossed it aside, and a gorilla quickly snatched it up to get rid of it.

"Heh, uh, hmm. This is…quite the unexpected turn of events." Clayton nervously laughed. "Perhaps we can reach an understanding—"

Jane stomped to the front of the group and began to lay into him.

"You miserable oaf! You knave! Liar!Good for nothing piece of, of," She shrieked between smacks, "I can't even come up with anything! You're horrible! Horrible!" Jane's landing punch was so hard Sora winced as she watched the look in Clayton's eyes dim as he blacked out.

She almost felt bad for him. Almost.

"That's my girl!" Dr. Porter cried. "Got the right arm of her mum, that one."

"Tarzan might have taught me a few things." Jane panted as she started to relax. "But what shall we do with him until we conclude the study expedition?"

"I think the gorillas got some sorta plan," Goofy answered as Kerchak moved in and grabbed the front of Clayton's shirt.

He reared back on his hind legs, almost taller than the cheetah heartless had been—Sora took a moment to be _really_ glad Kerchak was on their side. And then, in one movement, he tossed Clayton up, up in the air, and before any time passed Clayton's body disappeared from view as it sailed out somewhere over the jungle.

"Oh, wow." Sora muttered at the sight. "Thank you."

And with that Kerchak turned to the trio. She gulped. But thankfully, he didn't seem interested in fighting them too.

Instead, he pointed to the busted former cliff face with a stern visage. The message was clear: Go.

"Gotcha!" Donald saluted nervously, and him and Sora and Goofy hurried their way up the boulders and onto the dirt path that looked to lead to a waterfall. It was a welcome sight after all the jungle settings.

Down the river, Sora could see birds taking flight. She turned to see Kerchak and Tarzan communicating in their own strange language, and a smaller gorilla that she'd seen accompany Kerchak in the place with all the vines earlier look on with a much happier expression. Jane and Dr. Porter were making their way up the boulders to where the trio were as well.

Eventually, Tarzan joined the group on the dirt path, smiling widely. Jane looked over at him and started smiling herself.

"Why, Tarzan, what happened?" Jane asked.

He shook his head, the smile never leaving his face.

"Kala mother, Kerchak father," He said, "Tarzan home."

Tarzan had found the acceptance he craved. The home he wanted.

And with that, he started walking towards a cave right under the waterfall, and the group followed.

All around her, Sora could hear the others talking. Donald and Goofy with their own matters, and Dr. Porter and Jane peppering Tarzan with questions about what he meant by his statement.

And then Sora could hear a familiar voice. A very familiar voice.

" _I wasn't telling the whole truth earlier."_

That was Kairi. That had to be, nobody else here sounded like that. Sora looked around desperately, but the light in the waterfall cavern was low, and from what little Sora did see nobody extra had joined their group. Maybe Kairi was somewhere in the cavern?

" _There is one part of my life that I can remember from before I found my way to the islands. Beyond what I said of the castle and the gardens and working with my grandmother on the flowers."_

Her voice wasn't coming from any direction Sora recognized. She still couldn't see where Kairi could be in the cave.

" _She told me a story once."_

Was that voice…coming from beside her? Or from behind? Sora turned to see, but all she saw were the Porters and Tarzan on one side, and Donald and Goofy on the other.

" _I remember loving that story so much. I still do. It goes something like this: Long ago, like_ way _long ago before most of history, there was one great Light."_

Was that voice coming from inside her head?

" _But the thing about the Light was that people got greedy over it. And that greed formed Darkness."_

Sora whispered to Donald and Goofy, "Do you guys hear that?"

"What are you talking about?" Donald asked.

"I think…I think I hear Kairi. Do you guys hear another voice?"

"Bah, you're probably just hearing Jane."

" _But that Darkness wasn't perfect. Even in the worst parts of it there were still fragments of Light in the Hearts of kids like you and me. And those kids managed to find a way to rebuild a facsimile of that first great Light that was swallowed by that Darkness by piecing together those small fragments into something greater. By working together."_

"I don't think that's Jane I'm hearing."

But by now Donald had gone back to discussing the king's whereabouts with Goofy and the conversation was ended.

" _But that Darkness…while it swallowed the Light, it didn't destroy it. It couldn't. All the Darkness managed to do was make that great Light sleep deep inside itself. But the thing is that within every Darkness is a door. And within this Darkness, waits a door to the Light. The true Light."_

That was the gist of the story Kairi had told them when they were younger, when Kairi and her and Riku first became best friends, Sora realized. But why was she hearing this now?

Up ahead, she could see Tarzan slow in his walking. Wherever he was leading the group to, they managed to arrive at. Sora saw an enormous tree trunk up ahead that was overgrown with plants. Perhaps it was the same sort of tree as the one whose fallen trunk she had slid through the jungle on earlier.

On the trunk, a vast blue Light shimmered. Sora could feel the keyblade hum in her hand.

Tarzan repeated the grunting noises he told Sora earlier.

"Friends there." He said, "See friends."

"Ohh, now I've got it!" Jane remarked. She repeated the grunting noises as best she could. "He means Heart. He must have misconstrued that your word for friends could mean the same as his word for Heart. Perhaps it is better understood as friends in our Hearts…"

"Heart." Tarzan tested the word. He repeated it. It came out guttural, but his pronunciation was improving.

"Oh." Sora said disappointedly. "So that's what it meant."

" _One day that door's going to open. One day, that Light will come back to us. I know it will. And the whole point of that story is that if you believe in the Light, and in turn believe in_ your _Light, then no Darkness will ever be able to defeat you. Your Heart will be too strong for it."_

Sora moved close to the blue Light. She could see the vines pulse with it, like some ethereal Heartbeat, and the moment she got close enough, the Light flickered. Sora stopped. Butterflies that Sora hadn't seen on the trunk began to move, and their wings reflected the Light, and Sora realized now that that was what was giving it that blue cast. The butterflies scattered into the air.

She heard a very small voice come from beside her, then.

"Sora?"

That was Kairi's voice again. And it definitely wasn't coming from inside her head this time. Sora whipped her gaze over to see what was going on.

And between the wingbeats of butterflies, enveloped with the Light of the unveiling keyhole of the Deep Jungle, stood Kairi.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

" _Kairi?"_

"She saw me," Kairi gasped as she sank to her knees. She was unexpectedly exhausted from what had just happened. "She saw me! Sora saw me! And I…saw her." She finished with a fallen glance at the boy, still busy sleeping.

Whatever had just happened, it was temporary. And it sapped Kairi of any strength she didn't realize she had.

So that must have meant Kairi wouldn't be able to do it again so easily.

Ugh.

"I guess I'll have to choose my words wisely next time I do that." Kairi said, still a little breathless. She had to be optimistic. "But at least maybe I can talk to her for certain now? In short bursts?"

"If only I could figure out how I managed that." She wondered, and finished uncertainly, "But at least this means we're a little closer to a way out?"

She let the question hang in the air. And before her, the boy remained in perfect silence on his pale throne.

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTES**

Oh man. Oh man, oh man, oh man. You guys have no idea how close this chapter came to not happening at all.

Writer's block sucks, and lucky me it struck for like a week. Turns out, I don't do so well with reasonable timelines for finishing work. Cutting things close on a regular basis is just kinda how I roll, it turns out! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ I know I said friday, and on Tumblr I ended up posting that snippet for this chapter in case my power went out (it didn't, yay!) and I couldn't post, and *then* I said it's coming either late friday or so-late-it's-early on saturday, and I guess 11:31 AM on saturday qualifies as early °□°

sorry bout that :(

I didn't enjoy the Deep Jungle level at all when I first played it. Confession: I cheated. A lot. That godawful part with the vines you have to swing around on? I ended up skipping that entirely. Turns out, that tree trunk at the far end of the hippos' lagoon is a cheap shot that'll take you exactly where you gotta go to get the necessary cutscene if you can just at exactly the right second, so I just bypassed the vines entirely.

Also, now you have an idea of what sort of role Ventus plays in this game! Basically as the comatose soundboard for all of Kairi's musings and rantings and reminiscing. I'd probably do the same thing if I was isolated like that. Going without people for too long makes anyone go a little crazy, I think. Even for the most hardcore of introverts.

Some notes:  
1\. I deliberately drew parallels between Tarzan and Kairi being abandoned and trying to find a home because it was 3 AM and I was desperate to have some sort of a b-plot for this chapter beyond recounting exactly what goes on in this level. Obviously I loved the idea of a Kairi-centric chapter (I hadn't given her much screentime until now) that goes way more into her backstory on her time in Destiny Islands. I even got to add in some of the deleted scenes from the prologue!

2\. I would just like to note that the room Ventus is discovered in is not the real Chamber of Waking! It's more like a projection of it sorta, in Sora's Heart. Like an extra little protection to keep Ventus' Heart from being found by any ne'er-do-wells with the same sort of Light/Darkness detection ability as Aqua in BBS (remember the scene where she and Mickey discussed Kairi's Light?). The fact that Kairi can see it, and access it, is a part of her Princess of Heart powers.

3\. I thought it was a Giant Freaking Waste that you fight Sabor 3 times in the level...and for what? So that the final boss can be this stupid chameleon thing that has cheetah-like markings and turns invisible but isn't actually a cheetah? Why didn't they just roll with it and not go half-measure? I dunno, so I just wrote it in that Sabor turned into the boss you fight because that makes more sense.

4\. Yeah, I kind of wrote Riku out of this chapter to give Kairi some much-deserved spotlight. Don't worry, he'll be back in the next one, there's way too much good shit that goes down in the next chapter to even consider it. I'm so ridiculously excited for Ch. 5, you guys, so much is happening finally! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


	6. Chapter 5: A Thousand Eyes of Night

**KAIRI**

If Kairi had been awake, she would have been aware he was in the area long before his hooded visage ever came into view.

And if she had been looking through her eyes— _her_ eyes and not Sora's—she would have seen him approaching around the corner, over debris and around the abandoned crates that were piled high around her body.

But all things must sleep from time to time, even Hearts.

Thus, so it was that Kairi never saw the hooded figure arrive, and she never saw him leave to pass along news of his discovery to Maleficent.

And so Kairi's body remained in that alleyway. Untouched, undisturbed, and unoccupied.

* * *

 **SORA**

For a while after she woke up, Sora did nothing but lay in bed and hold that projector slide with the castle on it up to her bedroom lights. She traced a thumb over the grooves and ridges that made up the engraving of the image, watching absently as her smeared fingerprints bent the blue-white glow of the lightbulbs into curved paths around the slide.

Kairi was there. Even for just a moment, Sora saw her. She heard her.

But how?

" _You can keep it, if you like." Jane said to her on the trio's last day in the jungle._

 _They had been readying to get back to the gummi ship, their time there wrapped up with the defeat of Clayton and the locking of the world's keyhole. The several days that had gone by in the unfolding of the situation had been rather chaotic—if not Clayton's antics with trying to hunt the gorillas calling the group to action, it was the heartless surfacing at random times. But Sora often found herself back in the study tent after that first day with the projector slides, trying to spark some other foreign memory to come to the surface. But none ever did._

 _Yet she kept coming back to that same little slide with the castle, trying to figure out what gave her that reaction in the first place. And eventually, Jane noticed._

" _Are you sure?" Sora asked, to which Jane replied by nodding and holding the slide out to her again. "Thank you, but don't you need it?"_

 _Jane shrugged and turned back to her sketch._

" _We're due for another shipment of supplies in a week and a half or so, and some more slides are already on the way. And it's not like there's any castles in the jungle, anyways," She chuckled, "So from what you described of that vision it might be of more use to you than us."_

But in the end, it wasn't of much use at all beyond serving as a memento. She had no idea of where the memory had come from and continuing to stare at it was doing nothing but burning the image into her retinas.

Sora sighed frustratedly and dragged a hand down over her face, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. And with that, she dropped the slide onto her bedside ledge and got up for the day.

"We're going back to Traverse Town, and _no_ detours this time," Donald proclaimed to her when she walked into the cockpit and buckled in. "No matter what we see along the way. Too much damage to the engine to risk going on any extra jaunts because someone crashed it!"

"Not sorry," Sora yawned, "Turns out they needed our help anyways."

"Lucky guess."

"So how long until we get there?"

"'Bout an hour." Donald answered, "Could have been sooner if it weren't for, may I remind you, _someone crashing the gummi ship._ "

"C'mon, guys, I thought we all made up back in Deep Jungle!" Goofy moped.

"I thought we did too, don't look at me!" Sora waved her hands, "Anyways, whatcha looking at there? Those the gummi blocks we found?"

"Yep," Goofy held the newest one from Deep Jungle up to the light. Sora could see something sparkling inside of it, like a tiny piece of a star. "I can't recognize what this one's for either, ahyuk. Never mind the one from Wonderland!"

"Maybe Cid would know? He did mention he worked on his own gummi ship, at least." She suggested, and Goofy nodded.

"I can't help but be a little concerned." Jiminy pipes up from his seat on the dashboard.

"Why?"

"With what you said went down in Deep Jungle makes it three for three on there being a larger heartless for every infestation, Goofy was right."

"Remember how the heartless tried to kidnap Jane at one point, too?" Sora pointed out, "Good thing Tarzan's gorilla friend—what was its name, Terk?—helped her fend them off, who knows where they would have taken her."

"That's another thing I was curious about," Jiminy gestured with his pen, his journal open in his lap, "Why are the heartless kidnapping people and not just trying to steal Hearts like they normally do? Such a thing suggests the heartless have some ability to strategize, which doesn't sound in line with what we know of them."

"Those scamps don't have any brains in them, believe me." Donald groused as he flicked a couple of levers and accelerated the ship. He quickly switched the levers back to their former position when the gummi ship gave a sputtering sound.

Sora gnawed at her lip as she considered Jiminy's statement.

"Maybe something's pulling the strings." She said finally and watched as they all looked to her.

"What do you mean?" Donald asked.

She asked, "Remember the Cheshire Cat? I dunno about the minor heartless there, but he definitely called on that one with the batons. Clayton seemed to have some sort of control over the heartless too, at least with being able to ride the big leopard heartless and steer it around. Heck, he probably called the smaller heartless there too, their timing sure wasn't a coincidence."

"So if Clayton and that hairball were making things run amuck…could someone have been directing _them?_ " Donald wondered with a shiver, "If them and people like them are doing the same things on several worlds, could there be something bigger going on?"

"I don't know," Sora was almost too scared to think about it. "We'll have to ask Leon and the gang if they've heard anything."

It was a tense silence that held a pall over the gummi ship's occupants for the remainder of the flight back as each of them thought over the implications of what they'd conjectured.

Sora was usually a fan of staring out the windows of the ship on her travels so far, watching the blue-black silk of outer space as its speckles of stars stared back like a thousand eyes of night. But this time, she was more thankful to see those stars spread out and diminish as Donald steered the ship to disembark in Traverse Town, going back to its place in the hangar.

Yuffie was the first to come upon them when Sora, Donald, and Goofy stumbled in through the gates of Traverse Town, their faces crestfallen and pensive.

"Hey, guys! Long time no see," Yuffie greeted them as she walked over. "What's up? You're all so glum."

Sora brightened at seeing her.

"Hey Yuffie," She replied, "We were just thinking over some stuff that happened while we were out. Do you know where Leon and Aerith are? I was hoping we could talk about what we saw with them."

"Ooh, tales of off-world adventures, huh? Count me in." Yuffie waved them over to follow her through the First District. "Leon's usually training in that waterway cavern place behind the Second District hotel around this time, but I'm not really sure what the point of it is: The heartless have gone nuts here lately for some reason and fending them off is enough of a workout already."

"Worse than usual?" Goofy gawked at her. Yuffie gave him an alarmed nod.

"Yeah, I was doing my round of patrols right when you showed up. Just an hour ago I even saw a heartless try to get in the First District and I thought we cordoned it off to them." She recounted as the Second District's doors came within view. "Thanks for giving me an excuse for a break, I was desperate for one. We've got a few other people helping make rounds and fending off heartless and that's been lightening the load somewhat."

"Newcomers?" Sora asked nervously and felt some of the tension drain from her at Yuffie shaking her head.

"Not a single one since you guys left!" She answered cheerfully, throwing Sora a grin. "Whatever you three were doing out there, you were doing it right. Haven't heard a word of any new worlds falling to the Darkness—Oh dangit, not again!"

Yuffie had thrown open the doors midsentence and was greeted by the sight of several heartless rising from the ground readying to attack. Sora would have laughed if she weren't busy summoning her keyblade.

As it was she was trying to charge up her keyblade with an ice spell while Donald did the same with his staff, before Sora had to duck quickly to avoid Yuffie's giant shuriken as she unsheathed it and hurled it at the heartless.

"Hey, watch it! I already got hit with that thing twice," She yelled in between fending off one pesky heartless that had its sights on her. "I thought you said you were a good ninja."

Yuffie caught her shuriken with one hand as she threw out several smaller ones with the other. "Never said I was a good ninja."

Sora used the hilt of her keyblade to knock a heartless off of Goofy's back, before firing a quick ice spell at it to cause the creature to give up with a weary puff of Dark smoke.

Sora joked, "Well, obviously not—Ow!"she yelped as a small shuriken grazed her in the forearm.

"I said I was a _great_ ninja."

"Would you two stop messing around for five seconds?!" Donald squawked as he cast another lightning spell around them, causing another heartless to dissolve with its Heart flying towards the sky. Sora and Goofy made quick work of the other two that were ensnared in the magic's range, shield and keyblade working together to clobber them into dust.

But as those original few were defeated, several more appeared to replace them. And with them came friends. By then enough heartless arrived to overwhelm the four, and Sora withheld from dealing any major blows in favor of trying to guard against the worst of their attacks. From beside her, she could see Goofy and Yuffie doing the same, with only Donald able to continue attacking with his magic. But it wouldn't work. Sooner or later, it'd be too much.

"We'll have to make a break for it!" Yuffie declared as she threw around her giant shuriken again, the weapon sailing around with a charged glow. "Jump over the ledge and go for the double doors on your left over there beside the fountain!"

"Are ya sure?" Goofy worried, cowering behind his shield against the onslaught of heartless. "That's a bit of a height, isn't it?"

"Come on, ya dodo." Donald grumbled as he waved his staff over both of them and wrapped them in some sort of a wind spell. "You had worse falls back in that jungle, now follow me!" He said as he grabbed onto Goofy's collar and forced the both of them over the edge, where they slowly descended to the ground.

After them followed Yuffie and Sora, who had to help yank off one persistent heartless that had grabbed onto Yuffie's giant shuriken as it returned to her. From there, she jumped, doing a quick somersault at the bottom to absorb the shock from landing. Sora could hear Yuffie following in her steps behind her and ran to where Goofy and Donald had opened the doors and were trying to hurry them through before more heartless could follow after them.

Once they were all safely on the other side the group could only stop for several minutes to catch their breath. Sora groaned at the sight of new tears at the hems of her sleeves and shorts, and a small bloodstain on her glove. Jane had tried to show her how to mend them back in the jungle, but Sora wasn't exactly a dab hand at sewing.

"So that's the sort of thing I was talking about!" Yuffie tried lightheartedly. "The heartless were like that all day yesterday and didn't exactly let up today, either, as you saw."

"Gawrsh, you weren't kidding." Goofy wiped his brow. "Is that the waterway you were talking about?" He asked, pointing out the barred entrance on the far side of the alleyway.

"Hey, yeah!" Yuffie straightened as she looked over.

The four wandered over towards the reservoir as they inspected the grating.

Donald, being the smallest, was the first to try fitting through the bars to no success. He gave Sora a scathing look at her snickering.

"I'd like to see _you_ try," He suggested, and Sora shook her head.

"No way, I'm not even going to bother." She inspected the bars, and noticed they were already weakened somewhat, rattling under her grip as she spied the rusted screws barely holding the bars in place. "What if we try ramming it together?"

"Good idea!" Goofy shuffled over into the water with Donald and Sora, and they arranged themselves to form a sort of battering ram. Yuffie gave them an incredulous look.

"Guys, I'm pretty sure there's another route in if we go—"

But Yuffie's suggestion was cut off at the din of crashing metal as the trio crashed through.

The three stumbled for a moment as stars swirled in their vision from the impact, and Sora had to blink several times for them to go away. Her head swam as she looked back at Yuffie.

"What was that you were going to say?" Sora asked.

"You know what? Never mind."

She shrugged as she waded through the entrance. Around the corner, Sora could see a couple of torches flickering. "Suit yourself. Hey, I think I see him!"

Sora slogged through the water as quickly as she could at the sight of Leon's silhouette waving around his gunblade. And beside him was Aerith. She could hear the others splashing in from behind.

"Welcome back, everyone." Aerith greeted them with a smile.

Leon squinted at Yuffie. "Shouldn't you be doing rounds?"

"Oh come on, Squall," She complained, "I've been getting mobbed all day while you hang around down here training. We were mobbed again trying to get here. The others can handle it on their rounds, I haven't had a break yet."

"It's _Leon,_ " He rolled his eyes as he continued practicing his form. "And training's important, bad form can cause you to sprain something in the middle of a fight and go from winning to losing."

"Isn't that what potions and elixirs are for?"

"It's a little awkward to try and take one while fighting off heartless at the same time." He reminded Yuffie, who snorted.

"Guess it's easier for a Great Ninja."

And to that, both Aerith and Leon gave similarly put-upon sighs of varying degrees. It seemed this was an old topic for them.

Sora spoke up, "We managed to lock a couple of worlds' keyholes when we were gone. We saw some weird stuff too, there were some things we wanted to ask you guys about."

"Yeah?" Leon raised a brow as he put down his gunblade. "Lay it on me, kid."

The trio took turns as they discussed everything that had happened. From seeing the heartless at Wonderland and locking its keyhole to their encounters with the Cheshire Cat. Then from there, the series of events at Deep Jungle that ended with Tarzan leading them to the keyhole. And finally, Sora seeing Kairi for that one quick moment.

"Donald and Goofy and the rest said they couldn't see her when I did, but I swear she was there!" Sora insisted, "Even just for like, like a moment! And on the walk to the place with the butterflies, I kept hearing her voice in my head. I don't know what it means."

Aerith gave her a sympathetic look.

"Certain people, we carry in our Hearts," Aerith began as she took a step closer. "Perhaps not literally, but figuratively. And sometimes we want to see these people so much that we find pieces of them in everything we do."

"What do you mean?" Sora asked.

"She means you're seeing things, silly." Yuffie piped up.

"Yuffie, don't be insensitive." Aerith chided.

"What?" Sora looked back and forth between them, picking up on their tinges of disbelief in their expressions. "No, you guys, I'm serious. I actually saw her. She was right there."

Leon shrugged, and Sora could tell he still didn't take her seriously on this. "Well, we don't know much about how keyholes or worlds' Hearts work. Maybe it was even something to do with the keyblade. All of these factors involved could mean that maybe you weren't just seeing things after all."

"That's true…"

This time, Donald interjected.

"There was something we were discussing on the ride over we wanted to ask you about: Sora thought something could be controlling the heartless." At this, he recounted Jiminy's statement about the creatures' latest patterns of behavior.

"It's not normal," Sora said, "He was right about that stuff suggesting the heartless would be planning something from what we know of what's going on, but there's no way it's the heartless doing it. Just earlier when Yuffie and us were getting slammed with them the heartless relied on strength in numbers and mobbing us like they always do, like they're following an instinct and nothing else. But kidnapping certain people? Not just taking their Hearts? Something's up."

"That's true," Yuffie agreed. "Where could they be taking those people?"

Leon was quiet for a moment as he stared at the still surface of the water, deep in thought.

"You mentioned that cat and the hunter had some measure of control over them?"

"Yeah. The cat in particular implied he knew where Alice went, but he didn't tell us anything beyond how she was 'with the shadows, into Darkness'. But he definitely summoned the giant heartless that was there. Clayton didn't seem to have too much control, but we didn't see enough of him to know for sure. He definitely commanded that leopard heartless, though, he was riding around on it." Sora answered.

"Still think that cat was full of bologna," Donald muttered.

"What do we know about the kidnapping victims so far?" Leon asked.

"Nothing really, beyond that they are all girls," Aerith responded, "But only specific ones for some reason. Other girls have been turned to heartless just the same. What Sora said of Alice and Jane's incidents was in line with their new behavior."

At this, Leon looked to the three. "Was there anything different about Alice and Jane that you could recall?"

Goofy shook his head. "Nothing, they seemed perfectly normal."

They all went quiet at this as they pondered what they learned.

"Ugh!" Yuffie threw her hands up. "This is ridiculous, nothing's solved and it's only more complicated."

"You're telling me," Sora cut in.

"From what you've told us so far you could be exactly right," Leon sighed. "There very well could be some other force controlling the heartless and coordinating the people who use them for their own ends. Have you guys found any of those Ansem Reports yet?"

"No," The trio answered sadly in unison.

"Just keep looking, I'm sure they're out there," Aerith consoled them. "In the meantime, Yuffie told me we haven't had any newcomers since you guys set out. That's one success."

"Sure doesn't feel like it to me," Donald bowed his head.

At this, Aerith smiled.

"A victory's still a victory even if it doesn't feel like you're winning yet. Sometimes all you can do is stay hopeful, stay aware of any opportunities, and keep trying."

* * *

 **RIKU**

Another heartless fizzled to nothing but Dark dust with a swing of his sword. Around him, more of the creatures clambered forth towards him.

The days after that mission in Wonderland passed by in a blur. Mostly, Riku spent his days training with the heartless as his sparring partners, who he would round up by strolling the hallways and beckoning them to follow him. He couldn't quite command them, not in the way that Maleficent could, but they recognized him as a comrade and at least seemed to understand his requests to help him train, and that was enough for him.

Usually the heartless ignored him unless he needed them, or if Maleficent gave them orders otherwise. All except for one little heartless that was currently busy standing to one side of the room watching him.

It never approached him to fight, but it never really moved away from the room either. All it ever did was stare at him, antennae twitching for some unknown purpose.

It was the same little heartless that woke him up on his first morning there. And every day after that it would usually come to wake him up in the same method, poking the tip of his nose with a clawed finger repeatedly until Riku's face squirmed as he woke up. He wasn't sure why it did that. At first Riku wondered if Maleficent had ordered it to, but he quickly learned that wasn't the case upon asking. Nor did she seem to believe him when he theorized that that heartless in particular had some form of individuality or personal identity; Apparently such a thing wasn't possible with the creatures.

And so, he simply got used to it, and somewhere along the way that little heartless became his first friend in the citadel of Hollow Bastion.

But the matter of the heartless and any traces of personality they may or may not have been capable of developing was the last thing on Riku's mind today. Instead, between parrying clawed swipes and retaliating, he thought of Alice. In particular, the last time Riku saw her.

" _Well, here we are." Riku said as they looked up to the imposing doors of the citadel's chapel._

 _The doors alone were nearly two stories tall and inscribed delicately with scenes of a rose going from a bud, to a bloom, and eventually wilting to nothing. Throughout, motifs of thorned vines wound their way through the roses, serving to both frame and trap them in the composition. Riku raised his hands to grab the handles and open the doors himself, but they opened on their own before he could do so._

One armored heartless gripped onto the blade of Soul Eater to stifle its thrust, its gauntlets tinkling as it did so. Riku scowled and ripped the sword out of its grasp and felt a Dark pleasure at seeing the unarmored parts of its hands start spilling smoke from its new wounds. Another swing and the sword jabbed into the heartless' torso, and the heartless crumbled to dust.

 _In the deep depths of the room, Maleficent looked on at the pair as they walked in. She met Riku's eye and gave another one of her catlike smiles._

" _Well, well," Maleficent strode towards them at a luxuriously slow pace, with Diablo ascending towards the ceiling with hardly two beats of his wings before gliding closer to the pair. "You've done a fine job, dear boy. I daresay I'm proud of you."_

Riku bit the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted pennies and ducked as one of the magical heartless floated overhead with a flame spell aimed for him. He got to the ground and rolled out of the way before the flames could touch him, noting how the soot marks from previous spells faded to nothing just like the newest one. Maleficent must have charmed this place just as she did his clothes.

 _His heart fluttered at the recognition, and Riku swallowed against letting any traces of it show on him. But his hand trembled at his side, and that was enough. Maleficent turned her head to Alice._

Another swing, and another heartless collapsed.

" _And you, my girl, will come with me."_

Two of the creatures ganged up on him, one landing on his back and the other struggling to maintain its hold on his sword.

" _Where's she going to go?" Riku asked. "She's…going to be okay, right?"_

Riku gave an angry grunt as he stumbled about with Soul Eater swinging as he tried to fling the persistent heartless off of it. He could feel its companion try to climb up towards the back of his neck, its gnarled hands poking unpleasantly at his back as it climbed. Riku wasn't worried about holes in his clothes—Maleficent's magic made it so that his attire was in impeccable condition no matter what happened to it, so long as she still had power. Rather, he was worried about the possibility of the heartless trying to wrap its claws around his throat from behind.

" _Why, of course."_

 _Maleficent didn't say anything more, and after a moment he decided to press for answers._

" _What are you planning to do with her?" He insisted as Maleficent took her by the shoulder._

He dismissed Soul Eater for a split second to free his hands, and the heartless still clinging to it fell to the ground. Riku held it in place with his foot as he reached around as far as he could to pry the other heartless still working its way up his torso and flung that one towards the far wall once he got it free. As it crashed against the stone the heartless dispersed with a fitful gasping noise and a burst of Dark smoke.

 _She and Alice were already several paces away by then, and they turned to look at him, their silhouettes framed by the dreary light from beyond the opened door._

Riku called forth Soul Eater again to aim a downwards jab at the heartless trapped under his shoe, and the moment he tried to pierce it the creature went two-dimensional, making his sword do nothing but clatter uselessly against the stone floor. He scowled.

 _Maleficent spoke, "When you first came to me, you spoke of wanting balance and how that man guided you to freedom."_

" _Yeah?"_

The heartless resurfaced farther away, only visible by the yellow light of its eyes in the shadows.

" _Recite to me what the man told you on the fundamentals of finding power in Darkness."_

Riku gripped tightly to his sword with both hands and half-knelt to the floor before racing towards it.

 _Riku looked down before he spoke._

"' _Belief. Trust. These are tools you'll need to attain rewards your body can't grasp.'"_

Soul Eater met the heartless' clawed grip with a surprising futility despite the power he had put into the attack. The two struggled in a stalemate for a split-second, before Riku pulled away and did a feint from the side. This time, he was successful; The heartless' distraction sealed its fate as he spun around it and jabbed Soul Eater straight into its back.

" _Precisely." Maleficent proclaimed as she turned to face him completely. "If you are to attain those rewards and anything I can offer you, Riku, then you must believe in me. Trust in me. The girl will be fine."_

With a small blustery noise, the last heartless vanished, and the room was finally quiet.

" _Yes, Maleficent." He said without looking up._

 _They left, and Riku stood in the Dark chapel with no company but his thoughts._

That was several days ago, with no mention or sight of Alice since. Riku didn't want to think of what might have happened to her.

His ruminating was interrupted by slow clapping coming from the doors to the room. Riku looked over to see that it was Maleficent, who had been watching his progress unbeknownst to him. The little heartless that had been watching him was gone.

"Impeccable work, my boy." She praised him as she sauntered over. Riku fought against his conflicting need to both flinch away and draw closer to her, and tightened his grip on Soul Eater.

"What do you want?"

"All business, aren't you?" Maleficent simpered at him and gave an enigmatic smile. "But then again, such is precisely why I chose you. I never did like to suffer fools. No, I came in here to summon you for another errand. This time I'll be the one to accompany you."

"What?" Riku's heart began to race as a million questions ran through his mind. Did she find out about Wonderland? Did Alice tell her? Were they going to be punished for it? He cleared his throat against the fear and restrained from letting it seep through into his voice. "What are we going to be doing?"

"Nothing much," She said airily as she lovingly scratched at Diablo's head with one long red nail. The bird fluffed his black wings from where he sat on her shoulder. "Merely a short outing is all. I received some interesting news from a friend recently that I wanted to confirm for myself."

"And that is?" Riku trailed off, waiting for her to disclose the rest. But Maleficent yielded nothing.

"Be patient. I'll need to verify the information first, and then if it's true I'll let you know later on. In the meantime, you can wander around the place as much as you like while I work. A change of scenery will do you well, my child."

He exhaled. Riku was nervous about the possibility of another task like Wonderland. But if this time all he had to do was go with her, Riku thought, he could do that just fine.

Maybe this could even be fun for once.

"Where are we going?"

Maleficent moved her gaze to the far wall as she lowered her hand from Diablo's head. And a grin so wide Riku could see her canines began to spread across her face.

"A little place called Traverse Town."

* * *

 **KAIRI**

"Wow," She said as she yawned, "I didn't expect I'd ever be able to fall asleep here."

She was still in that strange room in the play island that was not the play island, having fallen asleep after the events that unfolded back in Deep Jungle. When she saw Sora.

After Kairi was seemingly transported to her side for just that split second, and returned thereafter, Kairi hadn't remembered ever closing her eyes and sleeping. But then, she thought as she looked back at the boy on the throne, who was still sleeping himself, it wasn't that out of the ordinary for her to sleep too.

But then her next thought made her stomach clench in fear.

If Kairi had been asleep…how much time had she missed?

She knew all too well the panic of finding hours had hurried by if she looked away from Sora or her body for even a split second. The fear of missing something important had been assuaged by the discovery of someone else in this place, but it didn't stop the lingering worry of whether Kairi had missed some pivotal clue.

The first thing Kairi noticed when she looked was that wherever Sora was, it was quite like the cave back on the island. She almost expected to see familiar scribbles on the distant walls when Sora turned around. It was, from what Kairi could tell, some large underground lake, and she and her friends were on an island in the middle of it, staring up at a dilapidated house.

" _Was Cid sure that this was the place? Looks like nobody's home." Goofy remarked, walking up to the red tarp that was strewn across the front door. "Hello? Anybody?"_

" _I vote we go on in," Sora said, "With how dark and wet it is out here it's reminding me of that waterfall place back in Deep Jungle. It's spooking me out. Weird to think how that was just yesterday."_

 _Donald made a disparaging noise. "You're just spooked 'cause that place made you hallucinate."_

" _I was not hallucinating!"_

" _Sora? Donald?" Goofy called out from somewhere behind the house, "I found a way in!"_

Wait. Hold on.

'Just yesterday'?

Kairi did some quick math. If the incident at the waterfall was just yesterday, and Kairi had been asleep for however many hours in this room, and suppose that she had been out for about the average amount of time that people sleep (or perhaps some extra, considering how exhausted she was after making contact with Sora and the fact she hadn't slept for what amounted to a week or so in the outside world)…

"Is the time here fixed?" She looked to the sleeping boy for an answer purely out of reflex.

Kairi tried again to confirm.

This time, she could see Sora and Donald were at the entrance to the house—if you could call it that, since really it was a large literal hole in the wall. They were going inside.

It seemed like only a few moments had passed in the outside world, exactly the same as the amount of time Kairi guessed had passed in here.

She tried again one more time, with her heart racing in anticipation.

And now she could see the trio were all standing around the room they had wandered into.

Kairi pulled away to give a loud cry of joy.

" _Yes!_ " She jumped as high in the air as she could, tapping her feet excitedly, "Yes, yes," Kairi hollered as she pumped her arm in the air with every syllable, "Ye-e-es!"

Eventually her great excitement simmered down into gushing laughter as she noticed the boy on the pale throne again, who hadn't moved a muscle or gave any signs of stirring at her outburst.

"Sorry, didn't mean to disturb your slumber," Kairi said as solemnly as she could, but the smile couldn't leave her face no matter what she tried. She laughed again.

"Oh my gosh," She said as she started pacing around, "Should I try and make contact again? What would I say? 'Hey Sora, that place you're in sure looks like the secret place back on the islands, remember it?'"

"Wait, no, I shouldn't squander the opportunity. Last time I made contact it knocked me out. How about, 'Could you help find my body?' Agh! No, that wouldn't work either. What clues could I give that would help? 'Oh, yes, it's located right by some nondescript crates and abandoned things that could be in any old place, you can't miss it.'" Kairi sighed, "For all I know my body's on a whole different world. Or she's on a whole other world. Or something."

"Speaking of, I should probably check on it." She thought for a moment. "Or would that be check on myself? Whatever." Kairi finished as she shook her head.

The moment she tried seeing through her eyes, Kairi was very glad she did.

And then her smile died for good.

The first thing she noticed was the usual sight—tall stacks of crates and debris around her, unmoved since likely long before Kairi ended up there. Abandoned. To her side was that ramshackle wall made of mismatched wooden boards that Kairi could just see through if she really looked, beyond which strings of lights twinkled from far off. And high around it all, the sides of buildings constructed of mortar and wood framing stretched to the starry sky.

The second thing Kairi noticed was a woman's voice that she couldn't recognize.

"What's this?" The woman said.

She couldn't move her eyes much to see, but a moment later whoever it was walked over into her field of vision.

The woman was a stark departure from anyone else Kairi had ever seen: She was tall, taller than most of the people Kairi knew on Destiny Islands, with startlingly green skin. The curved horns atop her head only served to make her seem taller, and completed her imposing visage composed of nearly all black robes with small flashes of red and purple from what little Kairi could see. The older woman was exquisite, in a cruel sort of way, the kind of savage elegance that a snake had as it basked in the sun. As its scales gleamed and it formed strange alphabets with its spine.

And her Darkness…Kairi didn't need all of her senses available to know it was roiling off of her. More palpable than any she had ever encountered, even Riku's.

Kairi didn't have any control over her real body save for her eyes, and even then, it wasn't enough to be able to look beyond into the woman's Heart to know the full depths of her Darkness. But regardless of this she could feel goosebumps rising up her arms unconsciously, the hairs on the back of her neck beginning to stand at attention.

"Oh, my. It seems he was right after all. A Princess of Heart, right here and waiting." She chuckled as she bent down to look at Kairi's body more closely. "I didn't expect it to be this easy to find you."

The woman inspected Kairi some more, and her smile faded to a puzzled crease of her brows. She squinted.

"A Princess of Heart with no Heart? And keyblade magic, this must be. Certainly not fairy magic." She hummed, "Keyblade magic in the form of…a serendipity charm? Quite the unorthodox choice. One would imagine whomever cast it would have gone with a tracking charm instead, for a Princess of Heart. Too valuable to let get away. But I suppose that's what made for my good fortune."

The woman straightened up once more and began to walk away as she clapped her hands twice. At this, a large number of Dark creatures with glowing yellow eyes began rising out of the ground, out of the shadows, from everywhere Kairi could and couldn't see. They looked to her with interest.

"You know what to do."

At this, the creatures scuttled forward to grab Kairi's body. She could feel their sharp little claws dig into her as they held her above their heads, their antennae fluttering against her back.

The woman waved them on to a large black hole she had made in the side of the wall, like she'd opened a rip in reality itself.

And the last thing Kairi thought before being shuffled through was how familiar that Dark portal was, though she had never seen one before.

* * *

 **SORA**

"So tell me again: Howdid you guys crash the gummi ship?" Cid asked.

"She started it," Donald said quickly, pointing a feathered finger at Sora, who narrowed her eyes.

"Hey, you were the one not wanting to go ahead and look around there!"

"I certainly don't recall it being _me_ who grabbed the controls and threw it into a nosedive!"

"You were wrestling with the controls too—"

"Alright, alright, jeez louise." Cid cut in, pinching the bridge of his nose and screwing his eyes shut. "Shut yer pie holes and forget I asked. I'll fix it."

Sora whooped in joy.

"For a price."

And her cry of joy quickly fell to an agonized groan.

Cid raised a brow at her as high as it could go. "Haven't you ever heard of 'give and take', kid? Besides, it's simple," He said as he reached under the counter display, "All you gotta do is go deliver this book for me to the old house in the Third District. It's the door with the big ol' fire symbol on the door, you can't miss it." With that, Cid flopped down a large book onto the countertop and the three drew closer to study it.

"What is it?" Goofy asked.

Cid shrugged.

"Someone came in a while ago with this book. See how old it is?" He traced the frayed edges of the book's cover with his fingertip. "It was in even worse condition when the guy brought it in. Paid me a good chunk of change to fix it since it was so beat up."

Sora nodded. "All I gotta do is deliver a book in exchange for fixing the ship? That doesn't seem like much."

Cid gave a snort at that.

"Kid, have you gone blind? I thought you said you saw how the heartless were out there today, don't tell me you forgot already."

"Okay, fair enough." She shivered as she took the book.

"Say, Cid, you recognize these gummi blocks?" Goofy asked as he pulled the two shards out of his pockets and placed them on the countertop. "Neither me nor Donald have ever seen these types before."

"You're kiddin' me!" He exclaimed as he leaned close to look at the gummi blocks and held the sparkling one up to the light. "You three are flyin' around in that fancy schmancy gummi ship and you know nothin' bout navigation gummis and warp gummis?"

Donald stamped his foot at this, but Goofy quirked his head in curiosity.

"Warp gummis?" Goofy wondered.

Cid sighed so harshly Sora was surprised his toothpick didn't fall out of his mouth.

"Bunch of pinheads, interspace ain't no playground." And with this, he picked up both of the gummis. "Warp gummis help you get to places super fast. Like, teleport kind of fast."

"So, we can teleport past the heartless in outer space?" Donald suggested hopefully.

"Exactly that. Your ship'll zip right past those suckers on your route. Only drawback is that they can't teleport you to new places, only to places you've been to before."

"That'd be nice," Sora grinned, "Donald can't slam the brakes on the ship and throw everyone around anymore."

She grinned wider at Donald's deadpan look.

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me," Cid shook his head. "Alright, how about this. Deliver that book for me and I'll fix the gummi ship, and I'll even throw in installing these two gummis for you. Sound good?"

"Sounds great!" Sora chirped as she hugged the book to herself. "We'll get rolling, we'll be back gramps."

"See ya later, kid." He said and stopped for a moment. "Hey, kid?"

"Yeah?"

"Before you go out there, you got potions and stuff, right?"

Sora smiled. "Yes, gramps, I have it covered. Don't worry."

"Good." He said, and she left.

As the door closed behind them and the trio moved through the First District towards the distant doors of the third, Sora looked a little more closely at the book.

"Doesn't seem like anything special to me, I wonder what's inside." She said offhandedly as she began to pull away the clasp sealing it closed. Donald threw a tiny warning spark at her from his staff to stop her in her tracks.

"Don't open it." He ordered.

"What? Why?"

"Don't open it." Donald repeated with a stern look. "That's no ordinary book, it's got magic all over it."

"How can you tell?"

"I'm the court magician, what do you think?" He fired back as he crossed his arms. "At the very least, wait until we get there and ask first. Some magic books can be funny about that sort of thing."

"Fine, okay," Sora said as she went back to hugging the book again. "How long will it take for the ship to be fixed?"

"Gawrsh, probably a coupla days." Goofy estimated as the door to the Third District drew closer.

Donald sulked at the words. "Cid better not break anything."

"Don't worry, Donald, I'm sure he's just as good as Chip and Dale back home!"

Goofy grabbed onto the door's handle and threw it open wide, revealing several heartless already at the scene.

" _Yipe!_ "

"This is really getting old," Donald spat before launching fireball after fireball at the foes, but for every one that dispersed two more took its place.

"Guys?" Sora said as she struggled to hold onto the book tightly in one hand and use her keyblade effectively with the other, "I'm not sure I'd be able to fight so effectively with this book," She snarled at a heartless as it tried swiping a clawed hand at the cover, "These things are gonna damage it all over again if we keep standing here!"

"Agreed," Donald concurred with a blast of ice, "We gotta get outta here! The door's just over there, run!"

Goofy and Sora followed his lead as he gestured to a large door settled in a niche in the wall, adorned with a glowing red flame symbol on it.

Upon running towards it, her and Goofy felt around the edges of the door, trying to find a handle. But there was none. And from behind, Sora could hear the heartless horde clamber closer.

"Donald, how do we get in?!"

"It's a magic door, so use magic!" Donald yelled in between throwing spells at the heartless, trying to keep them at bay.

With one hand Sora raised her keyblade and launched the most powerful ice spell she could at the door, but it didn't do anything beyond coat the entrance in frost. The door stayed closed.

"Didn't work!"

At this, Donald grumpily looked towards them, and then at the door. And finally, he rolled his eyes so hard Sora wondered if they'd launch off into space.

"Fire, dummy. Use a _fire_ spell." He said as fire erupted from his staff to the symbol on the door. And with it, a small chime sounded out as it opened. The group raced inside and put their weight against the door to push it shut. Sora could hear the distant claws and shoving through the thick material.

"I really hope they can't get inside."

"Nah, they can't," Donald said, straightening his hat. "They'd need to use a fire spell too, and there's no way they'd be able to figure it out. Where are we?"

The group had found themselves in a large underground cavern, much bigger than the waterway they'd met with Leon and Aerith in. A small sandy bank sloped towards a vast body of water, on which a series of stepping stones moved back and forth. In the distance, they could see a small house perched on an island in the underground lake, that looked to have fallen to disrepair.

"I guess that's where we gotta go," Sora began to walk towards the stepping stones and hopped from one to the next easily, thankful for the practice she'd gotten for this from racing Riku across those platforms back on Destiny Islands. "Keep up!"

Donald and Goofy's journey across the water was less than graceful, with Donald falling into the water with a spectacular splash right after he told Goofy to go faster. But eventually, both of them made it onto the island, and stared up at the crumbling building.

"Was Cid sure that this was the place? Looks like nobody's home." Goofy remarked, walking up to the red tarp that was strewn across the front door. "Hello? Anybody?"

"I vote we go on in," Sora said, "With how dark and wet it is out here it's reminding me of that waterfall place back in Deep Jungle. It's spooking me out. Weird to think how that was just yesterday."

Donald made a disparaging noise. "You're just spooked 'cause that place made you hallucinate."

"I was not hallucinating!"

"Sora? Donald?" Goofy called out from somewhere behind the house, "I found a way in!"

"I'm not sure we should be breaking and entering," Donald muttered as they both went to go see what Goofy found.

"It'll be fine," Sora waved a hand dismissively at him, "Looks like nobody's home anyway. If anyone does show up, we'll just tell them we're there 'cause Cid asked us to."

"Still," Donald started, but whatever he was going to say next seemed to leave his thoughts as they both saw the 'way in' that Goofy discovered. "Are you kidding?"

"What?" Goofy asked.

"Goofy, that is a _literal hole in the wall_."

"I mean, it does count as a way in," Sora proffered. Donald scowled at them both.

"And a way to jail!" He squawked, "I vote we wait out here for whoever we've got to deliver that book to."

"And I vote we go in," Sora said as she stepped inside and brushed aside the tarp haphazardly draped over the hole.

It was quite dark inside the house, and clearly abandoned. There was nothing in the room she had wandered in on but cobwebs and dust. Behind her, Sora heard her friends clamber in.

"You were supposed to wait until everybody voted," Donald pointed out with a huff. Sora grinned mischievously.

"You still followed me, didn't you?" She replied, "Besides, Goofy was the one who found this entrance, he would have gone in anyways too."

"That's true," Goofy chortled, and they both laughed at Donald's vexed expression.

"I see you've arrived sooner than I expected!" A new voice exclaimed, and the trio turned to see an elderly man come in through the front door.

He looked to be of average height, if you didn't count the absurdly tall pointed hat he wore, with an overlong white beard nearly skimming the floor. The man wore plain blue robes that matched his hat, and in one hand he carried what looked to be an antique doctor's bag that appeared as aged as him, with a wand clutched in the other hand. He adjusted his glasses.

Sora was confused. "You knew we were coming?"

"Of course."

"So that magic book is yours?" Donald asked as he moved closer. "Who are you?"

"Oh dear, forgive my manners for forgetting introductions." The man said as he moved to place his bag on the floor and opened it. "And forgive me for taking a moment more to get my sundries out of the way while we chat. _Presto!_ "

He flicked his wand, and out of the bag came spilling all sorts of things: Furnitures and housewares, chairs that danced and tables that turned. Sora had to swerve to avoid a fire poker that floated over the trio, which was accompanied soon after by a teapot and its teacups that chased after it. A bed roved over to the corner, with bedlinens situating themselves properly onto the mattress. The room came into view properly as a small fire merrily crackled to life in the hearth, and small oil lamps hovered along the walls that grew flames to match.

Before the trio floated a set of chairs and a table with enough spaces for all of them to sit comfortably, and a tablecloth lounged out across it lazily. And before Sora knew it, the small tea service she had seen floating by earlier steamed with fresh tea inside and a tray replete with petit fours and canapés pranced their way onto the table. At the man's behest, the group sat down at the table. Sora noticed there was an extra seat left unoccupied.

"She should be along any minute," He noted with a glance at a small ornate carriage placed gently in the corner of the now-occupied home. She could see it was beginning to sparkle. "Ah! Here she comes."

A silhouette composed of glimmering blue Light swirled into view, and the Light dimmed to reveal an elderly woman wearing a periwinkle robe fastened with a bright magenta bow, with a hood pulled over her short silver hair. In one hand she held a wand just like Merlin's.

"Oh goodness, they're here already!" She held a hand to her cheek in surprise before coming over to occupy the last chair.

"Indeed, quite punctual," The man remarked as he reached for a teacup. "Now then, introductions! An essential basis for any relationship. I'm Merlin."

"And I'm the Fairy Godmother!" The elderly woman gave a pleasant smile as she waved her wand with a shower of glitter.

"And I expect the two of you are Donald and Goofy, the king's cohorts?"

"You know the king?" Donald asked excitedly. Beside him, Goofy leaned closer with a fervent nod. This was the first time either of them had heard news on the king since before their journey began.

"Why, of course!" Merlin said before turning to Sora, "And who might you be?"

But by this point Sora's shock made her mouth go slack. She blinked in the struggle to formulate words.

"No way. No way!"

"I must say, in all my travels I've never heard a name like 'No way' before," Merlin chuckled.

"You're _Merlin?_ "

"The one and only!"

"Like, _the_ Merlin. King Arthur Merlin."

"I did know a boy named Arthur once," His eyes twinkled, but now his expression was tinged with sadness. "He made a good king, I'll say."

Sora seemed to have lost the ability to speak suddenly. Her eyes gaped open as much as her mouth.

That is, until Donald elbowed her in the side.

"Don't be rude!"

"Right, um, uh." Sora tried her best to blink away her surprise, "I'm…I'm Sora."

"Ah ha! A name!" Both Merlin and the Fairy Godmother shared a smile at this, "I see these two have found the key as per the king's request."

"And right on time, too," The Fairy Godmother added.

"What did the king ask you to do?" Goofy asked.

"Your king asked us both to help you on your journey," She replied, and looked to Sora. "In particular, to teach you the basics of magic, my dear."

* * *

 **RIKU**

Traverse Town was a nice enough place, he thought. It wasn't quite as sprawling as some of the larger cities of the islands, and it wasn't anywhere near as modernized, but it had a vibe that felt 'small town' and 'downtown' simultaneously. Riku could even venture to call it cozy.

But that left out the fact that there wasn't much to do around here.

After he and Maleficent initially arrived, she waved him off and told him to go explore. Riku was half tempted to try following her for a while, but quickly decided against it. He already disobeyed her once, no need to further risk her wrath.

But that didn't stop him from wondering what she might be up to. What was the news she had heard? Who told her? Was it related to their mission to bring balance, or was it something else? Riku's thoughts were disrupted by someone pulling at the hem of his shirt.

He looked down to see a small boy trying to get his attention. On further inspection, he noticed the boy's wooden skin and boxy joints in his arms and legs, and Riku realized the boy was in fact a puppet.

"Hey, mister?" The boy asked.

"What?"

"Have you seen my father? Or Jiminy?" He scrunched up his face in thought, an odd sight considering he was made of wood. "One's teeny-weeny, that's Jiminy. He wears a little coat and a top hat. My father's name is Gepetto, he's about the same height as you and he's got grey hair too."

"Are they around here?" Riku asked. The boy shrugged.

"Last I saw them was back in my father's workshop. That was where we lived, until one day those black creature things came. Before I knew it, I woke up here!"

Riku furrowed his brows.

"Those black creatures…do you mean the heartless?"

"Is that what they're called?" The boy's eyes widened, "Gosh! I've been seeing them all over the place while I've been looking. What are they?"

Riku wasn't quite sure of that himself. All Maleficent had told him was that they were the Hearts of people who had fallen to Darkness because they weren't careful with it, but that didn't make much sense to him. No Hearts that he could see came out when Riku destroyed them in training, supposing that a person's Heart was anything like the worlds' Hearts that he had seen so far. No twinkling Light or anything.

But then, he supposed, perhaps that was why they had fallen to the Darkness in the first place. No Light, no balance.

"Basically they're just products of Darkness." Riku answered, knowing he technically wasn't wrong. Whether or not they were Hearts was one thing, but they certainly weren't created by any Light.

"Darkness? Blech!" The boy made a disgusted expression and Riku scowled. "Darkness is no good, Jiminy told me so. He said it was too dangerous to ever bother with it."

"Yeah? Well, don't believe everything you ever hear."

"But Jiminy's my conscience!" The boy protested.

 _Just another idiot kid,_ He thought. And with that, Riku began walking away towards the door to the Third District. He hadn't gone there yet.

"Hey, mister, where are you going?" He asked, and Riku waved him off lazily.

"Away."

He pushed open the door and was greeted by a plaza that was much better lit than either the First or Second Districts, though not by much. Where the other two were lit mostly by gas lighting, this place had quite a bit of electric lighting. On the walls of the buildings decorative lights blinked, with a large golden fountain bathing everything in a soft pleasant glow from the corner. Neon signs that gave navigation between the districts and warned against high voltage lines glistened along the entrance.

Compared to the other districts, the Third District was devoid of anyone. That is, until Riku heard someone coming from around the corner.

"—I was _not_ hallucinating again, you guys—"

"—Second time in as many days, ya dummy, come on!" Another voice chastised.

"—She was right there! Again!"

Was that…Sora?

* * *

 **SORA**

" _Bwa-a-ak!_ Watch where you're aiming!" Donald cried as he turned in circles to try and put out his burning tailfeathers.

"Too busy training!" Sora said, before calling forth an electrical storm that bit at every piece of furniture that danced around the room. The sparks popped and screeched as they skimmed over wood, fabric, ceramic. "Wait a minute, I know a spell for that now!"

"I sure hope you do," Donald grumbled at the new black sooty smear on his carefully maintained plumage.

Sora grinned in response and raised her keyblade as green Light swirled around her and Donald, and the burned pinions straightened themselves and turned white again with a tinkling chime. He tested out his regrown feathers by tentatively wiggling them and gave his approval with a pleased huff.

"Good."

"Excellent work!" Merlin cheered from the edge of the room. The Fairy Godmother sent small fireworks raining out her wand in celebration as Merlin waved his hands to make the furniture stop dancing, the lesson finished.

Sora couldn't remember the last time she grinned this much. "Really?"

"Indubitably!" He nodded, " _Cure_ can be a complicated spell, and a costly one. It'll soak up most of your magic reserves if you overuse it. But in a pinch it can be quite handy."

She hopped from foot to foot.

"So can you teach me how to do all other sorts of stuff? Make things super tiny, like your furniture? Make them dance? Make fireworks?"

"Please don't teach her how to make fireworks," Donald groaned.

Merlin guffawed.

"Patience, patience! All good things come in due time, you see." Merlin said as he worked to set the room right again with the Fairy Godmother's help. A wave of magic ran across everything, serving to move it back to its proper place and undo the damage Sora had inflicted on it in her training. "Come back when you've mastered what you've learned enough that you can utilize it in the height of battle easily and I'll be happy to show you more. Your king asked me to show you battle magic in particular."

"Woah," Visions of an incalculable number of spells danced in her head, and Sora's eyes widened for what felt like the dozenth time that day.

She'd seen talking animals and flowers, people made of cards, discovered magic and casted it herself, and fought the heartless. Sora had come across a vast number of things she would have thought impossible before this journey began. But discovering Merlin really existed, and learning magic from him? That was the most impossible thing yet.

"Do you have any news on the king? Where he might be?" Donald asked, and he and Goofy both got closer to Merlin to continue their conversation.

Sora could have joined in the discussion if she wanted, but she wasn't too interested in it. She didn't know much about the king beyond the snippets she'd heard from Goofy and Donald, but Sora didn't consider it to have much importance compared to finding her friends and her mother. Or compared to finding those Ansem Reports so she could find a way to bring back her world. It wasn't that Sora didn't care about finding the king at all, but merely that she had different priorities.

Before she could think on the matter any more, the Fairy Godmother approached her with her wand outstretched. Sora leaned back on reflex, but the Fairy Godmother tutted at her gently.

"Now now, dear, I won't bite." She said as she waved her wand over Sora's clothes.

"What are you doing?" Sora questioned, watching in surprise her clothes repair themselves before her eyes. The tear in her sleeve from when she'd first arrived, the scrape marks from the heartless' claws, the small bloodstain on her glove from earlier. All of it vanished into a perfectly untouched visage, the clothes returning to the way they had appeared when they were brand new.

"Oh my gosh," She marveled as she took in everything. The grass stains on her shoes were gone, right down to the worn-down soles from where Sora tended to shuffle her feet had repaired themselves. Even the buckles on her shoes looked so new they sparkled. "Can you teach me that?"

The Fairy Godmother tittered.

"I'd be happy to teach you, but there's no need. I simply casted some continuous repair and clean charms on your clothes to help fix you up."

"Wait, continuous?" Sora asked, "So these charms are permanent?"

"Yes indeed, my child."

"So…in the middle of a fight, if a heartless' claw tears my sweatshirt again, it'll just sew itself right back up?"

The Fairy Godmother smiled. "Absolutely!"

"And if I get in a mud puddle, all of it will just, like, vanish? Into thin air?"

"It shall be as if the mud never existed."

At this, a lightbulb went off in Sora's head. And quickly she counted on her fingers. If she had been on the road for a week, and the last time was before the islands fell, then…

"Does this work on, uh, girl stuff?"

"I'm sorry, dear, I don't understand." Her forehead creased in confusion as she looked at Sora.

Sora's eyes started darting about as she noted every exact detail of their surroundings: Donald, Goofy, and Merlin were standing at the other side of the room and clearly engrossed in their discussion of the king. Nobody else was around, thankfully.

"You know," Sora tried, feeling her ears go hot, "Monthly stuff? Downstairs?"

She really didn't want to put it any clearer than that. But thankfully this time the Fairy Godmother understood, and she chuckled kindly.

"Oh dear! Yes, my child, it works quite well for that too. Don't worry one bit." Sora could feel so much tension she hadn't realized she'd had relax at this. "My apologies, dear, it's been centuries since I'd had to consider that sort of thing. I had forgotten."

Sora shyly nudged her toe against the floor.

"Thank you. That's…really cool of you." She said quietly, but then the rest of what the Fairy Godmother said came back to her. "Wait, did you say centuries? How old are you?"

She winked. "A lady never tells her age. I was around for quite some time back on my original world."

"Your original world? Did you lose your home to Darkness, too?"

"Sadly, yes." The Fairy Godmother sighed, "It was a place called the Castle of Dreams, but it was so much more than that. There was the village where all the commoners lived, the lovely forests in between, and of course the castle itself. I had been helping this lovely young woman—Cinderella—get ready for the ball, you see, with the help of some gracious young assistants who had found themselves on that world too. And it had worked: Cinderella and her prince charming had managed to find each other afterward despite the best efforts of Cinderella's stepfamily."

"But then, one day the heartless came and stole Cinderella away and took the Heart of the Castle of Dreams. And that was the last I ever saw of her." She finished.

They were both quiet for a moment.

"The heartless stole Cinderella?" Sora asked to clarify, and at her nod Sora continued, "Me and the guys have been encountering a lot of stories like that recently, too. Certain girls being kidnapped by the heartless. But none of us can figure out why."

"I wish I knew, too," The Fairy Godmother replied wistfully, "It's such a shame. The dear had such a pure Heart, I couldn't ever imagine who would do such a thing to her."

"I couldn't imagine, either—" Sora started, but was cut off by Goofy.

"Sora! Merlin says he might have an idea for where the keyhole of this world is, we'll be able to take care of the heartless problem!"

"Neat!" She replied as she and the Fairy Godmother approached, "That'd be great, those things were relentless today, I was worried they'd destroy that book."

Merlin nodded fervently. "The fiendish ruffians wouldn't let up on me, either. I had to cast several shield spells to keep them away when I was walking back earlier. I would have transformed into a bird and just avoided them entirely, or perhaps even go back to _Bermuda_ , of all places, but I wasn't sure I could keep track of my things. But I suppose I am being a little too palaverous, aren't I?" He lightheartedly asked the Fairy Godmother, who laughed as she agreed. "But I jest. Nay, the keyhole is certainly somewhere in the Second District. That's where the heartless were particularly voracious, by the fountain."

"The fountain," Sora hummed, and then snapped her fingers. "Alright! We'll go check it out."

"Excellent! And never forget what I taught you. Not just the spells," He said, ignoring Donald's grumblings that sounded suspiciously like 'I'm sure she won't,' "But of power. Knowledge and wisdom are the real power. Understand?"

Sora nodded.

"Good. Now be off!"

And with that, the group made their goodbye. As the trio made their way across the water, Sora absently played with her magic, sending tiny little fireballs across the lake to light their way, with Donald extinguishing them with frost spells as they passed. It became an unspoken game of cat and mouse, with Sora sending out flames zipping this way and that, with bolts of ice homing in on them like missiles. And eventually Donald started throwing out frost bolts without any targets, and Sora flicked fireballs at them in chase.

"She said she knew one of the girls kidnapped, too." Sora said as she cast another flame spell.

Donald put it out with a streak of ice from his staff. "Yeah? Who?"

"A girl named Cinderella. The Fairy Godmother said she had a pure Heart, that she couldn't imagine who could do it."

"Heartless probably do a lot of things we couldn't imagine," Goofy said as he skipped to another rock, almost landing off-balance from the sudden movement of the stone.

"Yeah, that's true." She replied.

"Not 'probably', they are." Donald huffed. "Could you imagine ever trying to take someone's Heart? Or make a world fall to Darkness?"

"Oh gawrsh, no."

"And that's the difference."

The three somberly stepped off of the last stone and onto the sandy bank at the entrance, games with spells of ice and fire left behind. And as they moved towards the exit, Sora looked back at the house. It looked much livelier now with its occupants, its decrepit visage slowly repairing itself back to what she estimated was its original appearance of a tidy home. Maybe inside, the Fairy Godmother was using the same sort of charm on the home that she had used on her clothes.

Sora shook her head. She'd _really_ need to learn that spell.

"Sora, it's me."

Her eyes darted to where she'd heard _her_ voice.

And there Kairi was. Standing on the sandy shore right beside her.

Sora rubbed at her eyes and blinked once, twice. But Kairi was still there.

"This isn't real. You're not real." She breathed.

Kairi gave her a humorless smile. "This definitely feels real. A little too real. Hey, I needed to ask you—"

"Sora, come on!" Donald shouted from the doorway, with Goofy close behind him.

"I, uh," She tried futilely, and then turned back to where Kairi was.

But her friend was gone.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

"Damn it." Kairi held a hand to her eyes and balled her other hand into a fist.

"Damn it, damn it, _damn it!"_

She wished she could go back to thinking this was all a dream. At least then she'd still be under the delusion that she could wake up from this.

Sometimes ignorance was bliss.

As it was, Kairi paced around the white room of the play island. She traced wide circles around the throne where the boy slept. For the first time, she was envious of him.

Kairi tuned in, out, and in again, and every time what she saw through her eyes was the same: The ornate room the heartless had deposited her in, with but one thin window she could only barely see a sliver of light stream in through. Along the walls crawled engravings of brambles and rosebuds, and on the far wall was a small desk with a matching chair and a bookcase beside them.

Kairi estimated that only about an hour or so had passed since she had been deposited onto the bed by the creatures. Thankfully the moment they finished their work the things had left, whether through more of those Dark portals or by flattening themselves to the floor and moving through the crack under the door.

She hated this place. It left the feeling of pins and needles up and down her arms and that same sense of weight at theedge of her senses, exactly like Kairi had felt in those days leading up to that fateful night on Destiny Islands. That night when everything changed.

That night when everything went wrong.

Kairi had no idea of what to do next. She could try contacting Sora again, she supposed, but it'd be too risky. Kairi was spent as it was. She was staying awake after that last try solely on anger and fear alone, to try it again would make her pass out like earlier. And now she _really_ couldn't afford to miss anything.

She took a deep breath and exhaled through her nose, feeling her entire body sink with the motion.

Kairi supposed she'd have to keep doing what she had been doing. Watch, observe, and hope. At least the time discrepancy was fixed, she consoled herself.

 _The scene picked up barely seconds after they lost contact. The trio walked out of the entryway to the underground lake with yet another small fuss by Donald and Sora._

" _You guys, I saw Kairi again."_

" _Like Deep Jungle?" Goofy asked. Sora nodded._

" _Ah phooey, you're just seeing things." Donald dismissed, as he pushed open the door. "Maybe you're just hungry."_

" _I'm not kidding!" She protested, following them out, "She talked to me. I was_ not _hallucinating again, you guys, I really don't think I was hallucinating in the first place."_

" _Please, if you're seeing something nobody else can see, you're just imagining it. It's the second time in as many days, ya dummy, come on!" Donald chastised as the three walked back out into the Third District._

" _It's not my fault you couldn't see her, especially if she_ was right there! _Again!"_

" _Gawrsh, you guys'll make a fuss over anything—Ah-yipe!"_

 _Before Goofy could finish his sentence, two heartless appeared before the group. The creatures shifted from foot to foot and lunged straight for Sora._

 _She wrenched her eyes shut on reflex and summoned her keyblade to guard, holding it out in front of her to prepare against a blow. But the strike never came._

 _Naught but a gasping noise came from the heartless, the sound they made when they were destroyed, Sora realized, and she slowly opened her eyes. Perhaps this was one of those volunteers patrolling the districts Yuffie mentioned. But it wasn't._

 _It was Riku._

Kairi could feel certain things Sora felt sometimes, like if a heartless struck her. But the effect was mostly related to emotional states, she quickly noticed—A rush of anger, the slow icy creep of fear. And sometimes she could feel things Sora didn't feel, like if there were a particularly strong source of Darkness nearby.

Such was what she could feel now. There was a Darkness emanating from Riku that wasn't there when she last saw him on the islands. Like a black veil drawn over him.

And Kairi could feel it when Sora's heartbeat fluttered at the sight of him.

 _He finished his move with one last flourish of his sword—_ An odd scimitar-like blade shaped like a bat's wing, Kairi noticed _—and dismissed it from his hand with a black burst of energy._

" _There you are!" The corners of Riku's eyes crinkled as he looked to Sora. "What's going on?"_

 _And for a moment, all Sora could do was stare._

 _But then her momentary stupor ended, and she breathed out a quick joyful laugh before rushing forward. Riku met her hug halfway, and together they dissolved into laughter. Her heartbeat fluttered more._

 _Finally they pulled away, and Sora couldn't stifle her mirth._

" _What's so funny?" Riku asked, before Sora reached up and squished his face playfully, still laughing in glee. "Hey, cut that out!" He objected, his voice muffled by her hands. Riku gently swatted them away._

" _Sorry, it's just," She started, still interrupting herself with laughter, "I never knew if you got off the islands okay or not."_

" _I'm here now, aren't I?"_

" _I hope so," Sora grinned, "I'm not dreaming this time, right?" She glanced back at Donald and Goofy, who shook their heads, before turning back to Riku and giving him a once-over._

Hold on, what?

" _I hope not," Riku said as he ran a hand through his hair. Sora's eyes traced the way it caught the light with its silver hue. "It took forever to find you."_

Kairi felt the corners of her mouth tug upwards into a cautious smile as her brows scrunched together. Was she the one seeing things now?

No, no she wasn't, she realized. Sora really had just given him a once-over, and Riku…Riku was legitimately preening under her attention. _Preening,_ for goodness sake, like he was a bird in a nature channel documentary.

If Kairi ever got out of here and back into the real world, she was _not_ going to let them live this down.

" _You were looking for me?"_

" _Of course!"_

 _Sora bit her lip as she smiled. "I was looking for you too. Is Kairi with you?" She asked as she looked around._

"I'm right here, Sora." She replied uselessly, knowing neither of them could hear her where she was.

" _Isn't she with you?" Riku guessed and saw that Sora's shoulders falling at the question was his answer. "Well, don't worry, I'm sure she made it off the island, too."_

"If you can call it that."

 _He stepped away for several paces and looked up at the sky._

" _We're finally free. Hey, she might even be looking for us now."_

Kairi had no response for that.

 _Before Sora could say anything else, she saw a Dark portal open up on the ground in the corner of her sight. She turned her head and saw a heartless clawing its way out._

" _We'll all be together again soon," Riku reassured, "Don't worry. Leave everything to me, I know this—"_

 _But whatever he was going to say next was interrupted by the swooping sound of Sora's keyblade as it slashed through the heartless in one strike. She grinned as she straightened up again, resting her keyblade on her shoulder and giving a victorious glance to him._

" _Leave it to who?"_

" _S-Sora," Riku stammered, "What did you…?"_

" _I've been looking for you and Kairi with the help of this," She gestured with her keyblade, "And these two!"_

 _She nodded to Donald and Goofy, the latter of whom gave a cheerful wave in greeting to him._

 _Riku's change in demeanor was instantaneous. His mouth pulled to one side, and his brows fell. He crossed his arms. His gaze never left the keyblade._

" _Who are they?"_

 _Donald put a hand on his hip and cleared his throat._

" _Ahem! My name is—"_

" _You wouldn't believe some of the worlds we visited, looking for you!" Sora exclaimed. Donald gave her a deadpan glance, but she ignored it._

" _Really? Well, what do you know? I never would have guessed." Riku grated, but Sora didn't seem to notice that either._

" _Oh, and guess what?" This time it was Goofy that spoke, with his hands on Sora's shoulders much like a proud parent. "Sora's the keyblade master!"_

" _Who would have thought it?" Donald shrugged. Sora squinted at him._

" _What's that supposed to mean?"_

 _Riku watched as the two got embroiled in yet another spat, the look in his eyes hardening. He hmphed. And then, to the shock of everyone, Riku extended his hand and the keyblade appeared in it, disappearing from Sora's grip._

" _So…this is called a keyblade?" He teased, but the glint in his eyes never left._

 _Sora looked down at her empty hands and then back up to him again. Riku tested the weapon with a swipe at the air._

" _Hey, give it back!" She lunged for it, still thinking this was a joke, but Riku deftly moved it out of reach. He gave her a teasing smile, but now it had an edge to it._

" _Catch." Riku threw it to her, and Sora caught it with both hands._

" _How did he do that?" Goofy leaned over to ask Donald, who shrugged._

 _She grinned up at Riku again._

" _So you're coming with us, right? We've got this awesome rocket, wait 'til you see it!"_

 _Donald gave her an alarmed look. "No, he can't come!"_

" _What?" She looked down at him in confusion._

" _Forget it!"_

" _Oh come on!" Sora protested, "He's my friend!"_

Seeing what Sora saw worked oddly. Kairi could see everything in her full range of vision, but her sight was usually focused to whatever Sora focused on. But out of the corner of Sora's eye she could see Riku's face tightening at Sora's words, and he began to move away. And then she saw him open one of those Dark portals and disappear.

And then, a movement caught Kairi's eye, and what she saw made her pull away from Sora's sight in panic.

High above the walls of the Third District, watching the trio without being noticed, was the woman that took Kairi's body to that room.

* * *

 **RIKU**

The Dark portal he'd summoned without thinking took him back to the First District.

He stepped out onto the cobblestones, Soul Eater held in an iron grip with one hand as the other opened and closed, clenched and unclenched at his side.

There was a lump in Riku's throat, and every muscle in his torso felt twisted up. And his Heart…his Heart alternated between waves of anxiety and anger. Earlier, Riku was ecstatic to see her. For the longest time, he was sure that was what he wanted—not just to have the keyblade back, but to merely see Sora again. To know she'd made it off the island too.

Well, he got his wish, didn't he?

He wasn't sure what he was feeling right now, but it wasn't good. Riku saw the keyblade in her hand— _his_ keyblade, a Dark corner of his mind hissed, the keyblade promised to him—and new friends at her side and that was enough to ruin his day.

Riku had never been that good at making friends compared to Sora. And for years, he didn't think it mattered much. There was Sora and Kairi and him, and that was enough for Riku. If he really cared, there was Wakka, Selphie, and Tidus too, Riku supposed, but he considered them more along the lines of good acquaintances than close friends. They were the ones you invited to birthday parties and joked with in class, but you'd still keep them at arm's length. The ones who, if they asked you how you were doing, you'd say you were fine even if you really weren't fine, because you didn't _know_ them well enough to disclose the truth of anything when they inevitably asked what's wrong if you indicated things were up.

But that was how Sora was. She wore her heart on her sleeve, she always had. Sora would be the one who said things were fine if they were fine and was able to talk about it with anyone when she said things weren't fine. She was the person who was able to talk to anyone so genuinely, and never stayed sad for long. Of course she'd made new friends in the time they were separated.

But that didn't stop the news from hurting him.

And that keyblade…

Riku imagined his reunion with Sora in a thousand different ways since they were separated. Countless ways of saying hello, the jokes he'd make, imagining how she'd laugh. But in every daydream, even after Maleficent indicated she was the one who was wielding the keyblade, it never came up.

But it did. And everything was so much worse because of it.

Riku gave a poisonous look at the sword in his hand. And with a grunt he threw it against the wall, where it made a dull noise against the mortar siding and clanged against the cobblestone. And then it dispersed with a Dark burst and reappeared in his hand.

He reflexively wanted to try and break it, but he didn't dare. It was better to have a sword than nothing at all.

And with that thought, Riku dismissed it from his grip. He could see Maleficent stepping out of a Dark portal of her own in the corner of his sight. He gave a forceful sigh.

"Can you just leave me alone for a while?"

"I came here to console you." She said with a morose look. Riku couldn't tell if she was pretending or not.

"You don't get it. You never will."

"Oh, but I do. I know the pain of ostracization all too well, myself."

Riku thought back to that first day they met, when she had told him she was a fairy quite unlike most others. He chewed at the inside of his cheek.

"What happened to you?" He asked, not unkindly, but rather genuinely curious. Maybe Maleficent could understand, just a little bit. Maybe he could trust in her.

"It was quite some time ago," She started, her horns dipping downward as she inclined her head. "And it was at a child's christening that they neglected to invite me to." Maleficent raised a brow at his unimpressed look. "One thing you should know about those days was that such a thing was considered an event that the whole kingdom was invited to. For us fairies, the invitation to royal events was a given even for insignificant fetes. Our power made it so that whoever ruled _had_ to invite us or risk our punishment."

She raised her chin. "For fairies, our power is as infinite as our pride. And if you insulted our pride…well. Heaven help you."

Maleficent continued, "The date of the christening soon came upon us, and all of the fairies were busy discussing the details. What gift to bestow, what to wear, that sort of thing. They had all already received their invitations, but I had yet to receive mine. No matter, I thought, they simply forgot. Mortals, the precious things, could be so silly at times after all. So I decided on my gift and I made my way there anyway. But it wasn't to be."

"What happened?"

"I came in and made my greetings—compliments to the king and queen for their work, at assembling every echelon of the land in an impressively democratic move, and what did the fairies there respond with? Not even a 'hello', or a 'so good to see you'. No, Merryweather took one look at me and said, 'You weren't wanted.' Could you imagine that?"

"I could," He shivered, thinking back to his mother's cold glance. Unseen, unnoticed, unwanted. Riku knew the feeling all too well.

"And what did the queen say next? Why, she asked if I was offended. The audacity!" Her eyes began to glimmer with that familiar green light even without any of the torches of Hollow Bastion around. "Imagine going to an event with all of your friends, and they insult you to your face in front of royalty, and someone dares to ask if you're offended. Of course I was offended. I was humiliated. But when you're in front of everyone you can't let it show. Pride, remember." She said to Riku, who nodded. "So I acted as though they hadn't gotten to me. I couldn't let them get that sense of satisfaction. And apart from that, I had to remember the reason why I was there: Not for me, but for the child. I had yet to give her my gift until then."

"What did you give her?"

And with his question Maleficent smiled widely, almost a grin but not quite.

"My dear boy, she ended up with the gift of true love."

* * *

 **SORA**

"Jeez, guys, who died?" Was the first thing she said as she walked in the door.

The moment the trio had discovered Riku left in the middle of their spat, Sora was disappointed. But she didn't let it show.

" _Where did he go?" She asked, but neither of them had an answer. Sora's face fell. "I still had so much to ask him."_

" _Sora…" Donald tried, in an attempt to console her, but Sora made sure it wasn't necessary._

 _She straightened up. "Oh well, at least he's okay!"_

 _Donald looked mildly surprised at her._

" _And who knows? Maybe we'll run into my mom or Kairi soon, too. For real this time," Sora added with a sly expression, and then saw his face. "Huh? What's wrong, Donald?"_

" _Nothing," He said, but he still looked surprised. "You cheer up fast."_

 _She shoved at his shoulder with her knuckles. "The gummi ship runs on smiling faces, right?"_

" _That's right!" Goofy agreed. But before the trio could talk any more, Yuffie had arrived in the Third District looking for them._

" _There you guys are! If you're done with your errand, follow me. Cid called a meetup."_

And here they were all assembled in a little ragtag house in the same district, with the first thing Sora noticed as she walked in was the dour looks on everyone's faces.

"Yeah, is it gloomy in here or what?" Yuffie agreed.

Leon was the first to speak. "You guys ever heard of Maleficent? We got news she's back in town."

"What?" Yuffie replied angrily. The change in her was immediate. From as cheerful as Sora to as grim-faced as the rest.

Sora looked between the group blankly. "Mal-who?"

"Maleficent," Leon corrected.

"A witch, kid, she's a witch!" Cid exclaimed, chewing on his toothpick so hard Sora could see it break. "Ugh, I should have known somethin' was up when the heartless got so gutsy today."

"She's been using the heartless for years." Aerith told the trio, "We lost our world, thanks to her."

"Really?!"

"Yep," Yuffie nodded, "After all the other crazy stuff happened with people disappearing and the heartless showing up, one day a whole horde of them came and overran the place with Darkness, according to newcomers that showed up here afterward. Remember?" At Sora's nod, Yuffie continued, "It wasn't long after that that we learned about Maleficent and her ability to control the heartless. Didn't take much to put two and two together after we learned."

"No doubt she's the reason why this town is full of heartless," Leon said from where he leaned against the wall. "Don't take her lightly."

"Wait," Sora said with alarm, as an idea dawned on her, "Do you think…do you think _she_ could be behind the heartless appearing on so many worlds? And those people getting kidnapped?"

"You might not be far off the mark, kid." Cid spoke up, looking perturbed at the idea himself, but not surprised.

"Oh man, it's gotta be her," Yuffie started pacing around the room, "There's nobody else to fit the bill!"

"What if she's here to make this world fall to the Darkness?" Aerith asked quietly, "With the heartless today, it's just like how things were before our world fell…"

"The keyhole!" Sora said with a start, smacking her fist in her palm. She turned to Donald and Goofy. "You guys, we gotta go where Merlin said and see if we can find it."

Cid turned to them then. "Where'd he say?"

"The fountain in the Second District! He said that was where the heartless were really getting riled up, that it had to be somewhere near there."

"That's interesting," Aerith mused, "That's the one that revolves when the giant bell above the gizmo shop rings."

"Was _that_ what that sound was?" Sora asked in surprise, "It rang twice earlier and made me nearly jump out of my skin both times!"

"I hated that noise," Goofy whimpered as he clutched his ears.

"Oh come off it, ya ding-a-ling," Donald said as he shuffled Goofy and Sora to the exit. "Let's go take care of it."

"You're not going alone!" Yuffie declared from behind them, and Sora turned to look.

Yuffie, Leon, and Cid were all readying to go, and Aerith was looking on at the scene with a smile. Yuffie made sure her shuriken were holstered, with Leon picking up his gunblade from his side. Cid was hoisting some unidentifiable machine over his shoulder.

"We lost our home once," Leon said, "We're not going to lose it again."

"'Sides, kid, you can't do everything yourself, even if that dunderhead duck is supposedly helping." Cid joked at Donald, who spluttered angrily.

"Who are you callin'—" He began, but Goofy put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head at him with a smile. Donald stomped a foot and walked out the door after Leon and Yuffie. Cid only laughed in response before following.

"I'm going to stay here and hold down the fort, but Sora?" Aerith asked after her, and Sora turned. "Stay in one piece, okay? Come back."

"I will, Aerith," Sora said, and matched Aerith's smile.

* * *

 **RIKU**

"Now, think no more of that girl and let's return home," Maleficent said.

She opened the portal, and Riku had already begun to step through, when a distant shout got their attention.

"Father? Jiminy?" It sounded as if he were getting closer.

"It's that puppet boy from earlier," Riku said to himself, and Maleficent looked to him.

"Puppet boy?"

"This weird kid who looked like a puppet made out of wood. He'd asked me if I saw his dad and friend, but he was just annoying. I ended up leaving him behind." He said and glanced up at her. "Why, was he important?"

"Perhaps. Bring him here."

He shrugged, stepping out of the portal before moving some steps out of the alleyway they were in and searching the area. As it turned out, the boy was right beside the entrance to the alleyway and had been about to walk into it.

"Oh! Sorry mister," He said bashfully, putting his wooden hands behind his back. "And sorry bout earlier, too. I didn't mean to offend or anything."

Riku pursed his lips. "That's alright, I think we just got off on the wrong foot. Hey, did you say you were looking for your dad earlier? And your friend?"

He looked up excitedly. "Yeah! Father and Jiminy! Have you seen them?"

"I haven't, but I know someone who might be able to help."

At this, the boy only got more excited. "Could ya show me?"

Riku waved him along and walked down the alleyway, hearing him follow close behind with wooden footsteps that made dull knocking sounds on the road. And as they rounded the corner Riku could see Maleficent giving that feline smile again.

"How wonderful!" She crooned, "What a dear boy. What is your name, child?"

"Pinocchio!"

"'Pine eye'," Maleficent said as she studied him, "Fascinating."

"He said he was searching for his father and a friend." Riku informed her.

"Really? Well, do tell."

"Well, first is my father. He's about the same height as mister here," Pinocchio gestured to Riku, "And he's got silver hair too. And glasses. Next up is Jiminy! He's real small," At this, the boy put his fingers together to indicate this Jiminy's tiny stature. "Like this. He's green like you and wears a tiny little vest with his jacket, and a top hat."

"How sad," Maleficent's expression of sadness was clearly false, but Riku didn't bother to speak up about it. It didn't matter, he supposed. "Can you tell me anything else about yourself? What sort of things do you want?"

"Well I don't really want anything 'cept to have my father and Jiminy back," Pinocchio shuffled from foot to foot, and then his eyes widened. "Wait, there is one thing!"

"What is it? Perhaps I can help."

"I wanna be a real boy! That's why father made me, because he wanted a son. He was lonely for so long before he made me, that the day he did the Blue Fairy came down and granted his wish! I was alive!" He spread his wooden arms, "But there was a condition. I couldn't tell any lies, or else my nose would grow like a tree branch. And one day, if I'm good, the Blue Fairy promised to come back and make me real!"

"The Blue Fairy?" Maleficent looked away as she considered his words. "Quite interesting, I've never heard of her before."

"Oh yes! She's a real nice lady."

For a moment more Maleficent stayed quiet with thought.

"Well, I don't know what her magic is like, so I can't do anything to counteract it and make you real until then," The boy's face fell. "But worry not. I can grant at least one wish for you."

"What's that?" He asked.

"I can help you see your loved ones again." Maleficent replied.

At this, the boy's excitement was extraordinary.

"Really, miss?! You'll help me see them?" Pinocchio asked desperately as he bounced on the front of his feet. Maleficent chuckled.

"Absolutely. All you need is this," She said, clasping her hands together for a moment as they could see a green light peek out from between her fingers. She finally opened her hands to reveal a small star-shaped stone that pulsed with that same bright green light. Riku and Pinocchio both leaned in to look closer.

"Golly, what is it?" Pinocchio asked, holding his hands out as she handed the stone to him.

"A star shard," Maleficent said, "It'll take you wherever you need to go. But star shards are very rare, so it is important that you keep it hidden as best you can, or else they'll try and take it. Can you do that for me?"

Pinocchio nodded fervently, but then he looked hesitant.

"This sure is nice of you, miss," He started, still cupping the star shard as gently in his hands as he could. "But how can I repay you? This is an awful mighty favor you're doing for me."

This time, it was Riku who answered.

"Don't worry about it," He said. "You wanted a chance to find them again, didn't you? If you want something, why not take it?"

Riku's and Maleficent's eyes met at this, and they shared a smile.

Pinocchio gasped. "You're right! Gee, miss and mister, thank you for your help!"

"It was no problem at all, dear boy," Maleficent said as the boy began to walk away. And then, quickly, the boy turned around.

"By the way, how do I, uh, how do I use it?" He asked, peering closely at the stone with one eye shut.

Maleficent gave him a smirk. "It's quite simple, really," She started.

"All you need to do is make a wish upon a star."

* * *

 **SORA**

The second the group walked into the Second District, they found the plaza had devolved to mayhem.

The heartless were _everywhere._ On the ground, on the railings, Sora could even see a few crawling up the sides of the buildings. In particular, they were crawling up the side of a tall white building with stained glass windows. Yuffie pointed it out with a shout.

"The gizmo shop!"

"Those little cretins!" Cid spat, "They must've been the ones ringing the bell all damn day!"

"Wait a minute." Leon started, and looked towards the fountain. "If that fountain's façade turns ever time the bell rings, and the heartless were making the bell ring on purpose, then—"

At once, the bell sounded once more. Being this close, the group was deafened by it, and all of them covered their ears quickly with varying noises of surprise and discomfort. Goofy tried to hold up his shield against the noise.

And then the group heard a grinding noise of stone against stone amidst the ringing in their ears.

They turned to see the fountain's façade begin to revolve.

The plaza lights—the ones not destroyed by the heartless yet, anyway—began to twinkle all around the fountain, a cascade of reds and blues and greens. And the face of the fountain turned to reveal a cube-shaped block in it with a different design in every side, turning to settle on a mosaic of butterflies around a blooming flower.

And then, Light began to refract over the mosaic, before it gleamed to reveal a shining keyhole. The keyhole of Traverse Town.

"That's it!" Sora rushed towards it, terrified of the heartless getting there first.

The creatures had all turned towards the keyhole when it was revealed, their glowing eyes turning to stare at it and the assembled group in eerie unison, glowing spots of yellow gleaming from the cobblestones to the rooftops of the plaza, eyes that looked so much like strange foreboding stars.

And then they charged.

Cid bit out strings of curses one right after another, enough to make even the most stonehearted sailor blush. He revved up the machine he'd brought with him, to make long jets of flame shoot out of it that devoured the smaller heartless that were unlucky enough to be within reach with one blow. Even the stronger heartless stumbled back from it when they got caught in it.

"Keep going, Cid!" Leon yelled, swiping his gunblade at any and every heartless that was close enough. He picked off a heartless that was seeking to get Cid from behind with a scowl and pierced it through with the sword.

Sora, Donald, and Goofy had huddled together back to back, alternating between physical blows and bursts of magic. Sora's magic reserves were already halfway spent from training with Merlin earlier, she could feel it, and she didn't want to use too much in case the worst happened and she had to use a cure spell. Sora broke from formation to clobber away two heartless that lunged for Goofy, and chased after them a short distance to make sure they were defeated. She stopped the instant she could see two glimmering Hearts come out of them and sail towards the sky. And as Sora looked around, she could see multiple Hearts sailing upwards, though not nearly as many as she would have liked. There were simply too many heartless around.

"Sora!" Yuffie called to her from the upper deck, where she'd been picking off individual heartless one by one. Sora turned her head. "Seal the keyhole, they'll be gone then!"

"Right!"

She tightened her grip on her keyblade as she made a short assessment of the distance to the fountain. Twenty feet away, she guessed, or thirty at the most, but there was several heartless already crawling towards it that managed to get past the group's impromptu blockade, with more undoubtedly coming…

Sora made a run for it, keyblade at the ready and reared back. And then, so quickly she'd nearly ran into it, a glowing barrier formed around it.

It was Merlin. And with him, the Fairy Godmother.

"We'll protect the keyhole. Defeat the armor first, Sora!" He shouted, waving his wand to flick bolts of magic at the oncoming heartless. "The rest will fall with it!"

"The what?"

The Fairy Godmother pointed behind her, and Sora turned to see several pieces of armor fall from the sky and begin to assemble themselves, exactly the same as the heartless her, Donald, and Goofy had fought when they'd first met.

"Are you _kidding_ me," Sora groaned, and jumped at the sound of the metal clamor against the ground. She raced back to Donald and Goofy, exclaiming "Guys! Just like last time, let's go!"

"What?" Donald asked as he turned to see the armor, "Again?"

"Right?" She shrugged, before setting her sights on the closest greave. Sora put one foot on the tooth of her keyblade as she angled it to the ground and flicked it in such a way that she glided on the cobblestone quickly towards the greave before it could strike.

She finished the move by turning in a circle with her keyblade outstretched and gave a powerful blow to both greaves at once. Sora didn't hide the grin on her face. Already, thick gusts of Dark smoke were seeping out of the wounds. Encouraged, she struck again and again. And every time she did so more Dark smoke poured from the heartless.

Soon, Goofy and Donald ran to her side to join in. Goofy held up his shield against one of the gauntlets that tried to flick Sora away like a bug, and the metal gave a sharp _clang!_

Donald sputtered out one lightning blast after the other from his staff, the arcs of electricity raining down all around the trio towards the pieces of armor. It worked: the electricity stilled the armor's movements momentarily again and again, until one particularly strong blast made the pieces shudder and fall to the ground with a cacophony of noise.

The trio stared after it, still hyped up from adrenaline.

"Did it work?" Sora asked, "I think it worked."

"I'm sure it did," Donald replied, and turned to walk towards the keyhole.

"Guys, I don't think it worked," Goofy said, as he and Sora noticed the pieces of armor beginning to tremble again.

"Nonsense," Donald waved a feathered hand, "Now about that keyh— _Bwa-a-ak!_ "

He reared in surprise as the armor rose up once more, first forming itself into the original arrangement of greaves and gauntlets in their proper places, and then it got on all fours, making the ground shudder. Its parts traded places as the helmet opened up to reveal two glowing yellow eyes deep within.

Cid let loose another string of curses. "I thought you guys took care of it!"

"I thought we did too!" Sora shot back, now holding onto her keyblade with both hands. At least it hadn't healed from her strikes to it earlier, she thought to herself.

"Oh dagnabit—here!" He yelled as he aimed the machine he carried, letting loose a long string of fire on the armor. It burned and burned, the metal going red-hot and nearly turning molten, and pieces of it began to develop holes from going soft. Out of the holes poured more Dark smoke. "Leon! Cover for me, I'm gonna help them out." He barked, and Leon shouted an affirmative reply as he swiped.

"Say hello to my little friend, ya prolapsed—" The rest of his words were drowned out by the roar of a stream of fire from the machine, and Goofy darted out of the way of it.

"Gawrsh," was all Goofy could say as they watched the spectacle. But whatever it was Cid was doing, it worked extremely well. Pieces of the armor began to fall away into piles of molten metal on the cobblestone. But then, Sora noticed, it came with a risk: Those same pieces of molten metal were making for projectiles that could harm anyone, whether on the group's side or not. She began firing off ice spells at the red-hot sections of armor.

"Kid! What the hell are you doing?" Cid asked.

"That molten metal it's throwing off could hit our friends!" She yelled back, continuing to fire off ice spells. "Let it keep bleeding out that Dark stuff from the wounds it already has!"

"Oh," He replied, before cursing more at realizing she was right. "Whatever, I'm about outta juice anyway," Cid continued as he removed the shoulder strap and began using the machine as a blunt weapon instead.

With the ice spells in place, the metal began to cool down, and the immediate danger of the heartless was dealt with. At least in the case of it throwing around molten materials.

But that didn't stop it from creating shockwaves.

As one half-melted gauntlet started smashing the ground over and over again, Sora could feel the shockwaves of it resonate deep in her bones. It made it difficult to move.

She had to stop it, but how?

And then Sora remembered.

"Donald! Throw lightning at it again!" She said and gave a grateful grin when he complied. The electricity screeched as it pelted the metal, forcing it to still for a split second. And that was enough.

Sora reared back her keyblade and ran towards the fallen chest piece and helmet, her vision dancing with spots as the lightning flashed. She had to rely mostly on feel for this, as it felt like she was watching a stop-motion video with the light from Donald's spell flashing on and off again.

She closed her eyes and swung the keyblade in a mighty arc.

Sora could feel it when the heartless armor was torn through. It parted beneath her keyblade easier than ever before, like she was dragging it through water, and before she knew it the armor was torn clean through. A great rippling swell of Dark smoke emanated from the fallen pieces of armor, mixing with the continued rips of lightning through the air to make an image not unlike a storm cloud over the group.

And through the storm cloud glided a great big Heart, joining countless others on its way to the sky as all of the smaller heartless in the area fell away to nothing.

"Well ain't that somethin'," Cid said while he put down the machine at last, which was now dented in on one side from being used as a blunt weapon. He fished in his pocket for a cigarette.

Leon held his gunblade in a more relaxed position now and stood properly as he looked up. Beside him, Yuffie did the same.

"'Ain't that something', indeed!" Merlin echoed. With a wave of his and the Fairy Godmother's wands, the barrier around the keyhole was released. "Shall we get going?"

"Yeah, kid, whatcha waiting for?" Cid joked as he took a drag off his smoke, and Sora laughed.

"Got it gramps, don't worry 'bout it." She replied, and he replied with a good-natured roll of his eyes. Sora walked over to the fountain, admiring the rippling glow of the water's reflection of the lights across the mosaic for a second, and aimed her keyblade.

Stars of Light coalesced around the tip, before shooting forth in a bright beam to the mosaic with a trilling chime.

And with a shifting sound, the keyhole to Traverse Town was locked.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

She replayed every second she'd seen that day over and over again. Trying to find some new angle she hadn't seen, a detail she hadn't considered. But she kept returning to that short reunion between Riku and Sora.

It was for the best, Kairi reasoned. She couldn't bear to think about what it meant for that woman—Maleficent, she knew now—to take her here, or why she'd do it. And if what Sora, Leon, Yuffie, and the rest had discussed was true, it meant she probably wasn't the only person here in this new place either.

No answers were found yet, and only more clues. And all along the mystery deepened.

But her friends…

Kairi thought back to that moment on Destiny Islands. That day when Sora called them over to the play island after she'd told them her mom had said yes to the raft. Little did Sora know that yes was conditional, but Kairi supposed that didn't really matter now. The three friends had definitely found their way off-world, she thought with a morose laugh.

But the thing about that day was the duel between Sora and Riku. The first they'd had in a long time until then.

The duel that Riku let Sora win on purpose.

At the time she was confused. Why would he do that? Riku loved winning, he was even desperate to win at times. He managed to defeat Wakka, Selphie, and Tidus in a three-on-one match. Sure, Sora beat him fair and square sometimes, but he'd never actually _thrown_ the match against her until then.

And then, the more Kairi looked when she watched Sora's and Riku's duels thereafter, she realized something: Riku let Sora win. Not a lot, but sometimes, and it only confused Kairi more. Why?

And it wasn't until today that she finally figured it out.

Kairi was almost embarrassed at how long it took for her to realize it. She'd seen classmates get crushes on each other a hundred times. She'd listened to Selphie wax poetic about her crushes to no end sometimes. But when it was happening right in front of her, to her best friends, Kairi hadn't noticed.

"They love each other, don't they."

The boy in the pale throne didn't answer. But Kairi had long since stopped sincerely hoping for any sign of life from him beyond sleeping. She laughed. What else could she do? That new Darkness over Riku, Sora going on world after world trying to save everything, and here Kairi was somewhere in the middle. Stuck. Imprisoned. Only able to watch and not much more. She looked over at the boy.

"What kind of mess have we found ourselves in?"

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE**

Alternate title for this chapter: This Slow Burn Gets a Little Hotter

WOO! And with this, we have both breached _100,000 words_ (holy shit!) aaaand finally reached the first of many moments I started writing this fic series for!

What moment? Well, you may be able to guess ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )

Some notes:

1\. Riku honest to god does a preening gesture in that moment in KH1, and it's the most over the top awesome shit that made me fall in love with this series. That, and that Sora honest to god gives him a once-over. Seriously, that beautiful boy rakes him in with his eyes. It's amazing. Canon can be really, *really* great sometimes.

2\. I didn't expect a Scarface reference to sneak it's way in here, but it fell out of my fingers onto the keyboard and I thought it was so timely I just left it in.

3\. It's a little shoehorned in, but I thought it was important for Sora to ask about how the Fairy Godmother's charm would work with the feminine reproductive anatomy. It's a worrying trend I noticed in all sorts of media, not just fanfiction: Nobody really even mentions it. Or acknowledges it exists (seriously, the only example I can think of off the top of my head is Game of Thrones, and that's by a male author!). I wanted to do my small part to help destigmatize it (seriously, why is is such a taboo to even mention it?) and normalize knowledge of it in my efforts to make the world a better place. That, and it's a valid concern for a woman protagonist of any adventure. I can think of only about two other instances it'll come up across like 6 or 7 fics in this series, so don't worry if you think I'm gonna derail the story or anything, I'm just going to treat it as a casual thing.

4\. If you noticed, yes! Kairi's body ended up on the other side of that wooden wall in the alleyway Sora wakes up in. The serendipity charm Aqua cast made finding her quite...serendipitous. *Ba-dum tsssh* It didn't portal her body away from Maleficent automatically because the spell was primarily cast to protect her Heart/Light (though for Kairi the two are the same ofc) and without her Heart, the bad guys won't be able to do anything to her to further their plans. But I'm probably overexplaining it ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

4a. Yeah, technically in canon it says (sorta?) that it was Captain Hook and Riku together who go went to recover Kairi's body from...wherever (at the same time as they took Wendy), but it never made much sense in canon to me tbh. Add that to the giant list of mysteries canon will probably never acknowledge! So I kinda swapped it around for storytelling purposes.

5\. There is a theory on tumblr that Riku met Pinocchio beforehand, and that's why Pinocchio told Jiminy "If you want something, why wait?" SOOOO I took that and ran with it for this chapter to help set up the series of events in Monstro! Canon never says what Maleficent/Riku gave Pinocchio, so I kinda filled in the blanks and made it so that Maleficent gave him a means to see his loved ones again with out of personal interest to study Pinocchio more.

6\. They never really discuss how long canon's events take to unfold entirely, but judging by the fact that CoM technically took place over, what, 24 days? Or so? I'm kinda just using that to help fill in the blanks on the timeline here.

7\. Also, Maleficent doesn't have the ability to lie. None of the fairies do. Actually, I don't think even in canon any of them technically lie, just Maleficent bending the truth as far as she can (if I remember correctly), so I thought it'd be neat to throw in that little bit of fairy lore.

God, I'm so relieved to get this chapter out


	7. Chapter 6: Threefold Gaze

**SORA**

"Well, I figure you're all set," Cid said as he smacked the hull of the gummi ship twice, much to Donald's vexation. Around the group, a larger number of moogles than usual excitedly darted around the hangar. "Recoordinated the 6-axis gyro, updated the autopilot to be able to handle small clusters of heartless— _not_ whole dang platoons, mind you, just stragglers—buffed out the dents and scratches, and replaced the coils in the plasma turrets."

"Gawrsh, Cid, nice job!" Goofy marveled.

"But wait, there's more," Cid replied with a toothy grin as he looked to Donald, "One feature I added to the autopilot that I think you may be particularly thankful for: Babyproofing."

"Babyproofing?" Sora and Donald asked simultaneously, with varying degrees of incredulity.

"Yep. After the last crash, I figured there should be some safeguards in place to keep pipsqueak here from taking the wheel again without authorization," He said with a pointed look to Sora, whose nose crinkled as she crossed her arms. "So I gave it voice recognition override just in case. You'll have to calibrate it to yourself, but that's no trouble."

Donald was ecstatic at this, but Sora was less than pleased.

"So no flying the gummi ship? Ever?"

"Kid, you're like twelve years old," Cid quipped. "Can't let you go getting yourself killed on your way to save the worlds."

"I'm _fourteen._ "

"Same difference."

But Sora's glare didn't let up, and eventually it was Cid's turn to cross his arms.

"Look: If a dang miracle happens and all this ends well, I'll teach you how to fly a gummi ship properly," He said, and quickly held up a finger before she could celebrate, "But! You gotta be tall enough to reach the pedals in my ship first. Got it?"

"I can reach the pedals on Donald's and Goofy's ship, though." She replied, and Donald gave her an angry look.

"Don't tell me you've been sneaking onto the pilot's chair!"

"Their ship doesn't count," Cid cut in, "It's made for a duck to pilot it."

It took a moment, but her stubborn glare began to crinkle at the corners, and Sora's pout lifted into a beam. Beside them both, Donald muttered angrily.

"Alright, gramps, it's a deal." She said and looked down as a moogle shuffled quickly past them on its way towards a flock of its companions, who were all chattering excitedly. "What are they so excited about?"

Cid shrugged. "Dunno. They've been like that since I was fixing up _Highwind_. Oy, Mogwin!" He addressed one moogle in the group, who looked over at him with its coral-colored antenna swaying. "What's the fuss?"

"A friend of us moogles is supposed to be appearing at the Coliseum for the fighting tournament, kupo!"

"Fighting tournament?!" Sora echoed excitedly. She looked over at Donald and Goofy, the former of whom was now inspecting the gummi ship hull for any leftover dents. "You guys, we've _got_ to go compete."

"No, we don't have time for a tournament," Donald declared, but Goofy looked more open to the idea.

"Come on, Donald, we can just take a peek! And besides, it'll be fun. When was the last time we did anything fun that wasn't just for our work?" Sora protested.

"How about yesterday when you were trying to replicate the Fairy Godmother's fireworks magic using a _fira_ spell?" Donald replied, and she scoffed.

"Doesn't count. I mean like a vacation!"

"She's right, Donald," Goofy spoke up, "We haven't done anything just for ourselves yet."

"Oh, don't you start!"

"Too late!" Sora chirped, "It's two against one. Let's go!"

Donald looked as if he were going to object to the matter further, but then he sighed.

"Alright, fine. The Coliseum it is. What are the coordinates?"

* * *

 **KAIRI**

The first, second, and third times she had come in, Kairi wasn't sure what that woman—Maleficent, she knew now—was looking for.

It wasn't as if anything had changed. Obviously she hadn't moved a muscle, and was still laid down on the bed just the same as when she'd been first dropped off two days ago. And it wasn't as if the world outside had changed either, interestingly enough: Kairi couldn't see much from her angle, and the window was nowhere near big enough to offer more than a small fragment of the view, but the light hadn't changed at all outside. It was held in an unceasing sunset, dusky and forlorn. At the edge of her senses suspended that same weight of an ever-present Darkness that made for an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu every time she woke up, like she was stuck reliving that last day before Destiny Islands fell again and again.

And every time Kairi reverted back into that play island that wasn't the real play island, she kept grasping at the sand, the leaves, the wooden scaffolding. She kept grasping onto the pale throne and talking to the boy that slept on it, because those were the few things left that Kairi was capable of doing. Because even though they weren't real, they were convincing enough to give her the illusion, and made for an escape from a terrifying reality that had long since ceased to respond to her.

Watching Maleficent wander around her room was unsettling. Like being locked in a cage with a panther that you couldn't turn your back on at any cost.

Which made for another strange discovery about Kairi's current state that she only just realized: Did Maleficent not notice Kairi watching her? Or see Kairi's eyes moving to look around the room? She wasn't sure what that meant, either, whether it meant that Kairi's eyes looked as vacant as her body to the outside world or something else she hadn't considered.

But before she could think on the matter any further, another Dark portal appeared on the wall, and both Kairi and Maleficent looked to see a hooded figure emerge from it.

And the moment he did, Kairi could feel ice crawl through her veins.

This man had two Hearts, just like Sora.

One coal black Heart with not a single speck of Light inside of it overlaid on top of the other, which was a weeping morose red that was too similar to the last dregs of dusk before the curtain of evening fell for the night.

 _(Eclipse)_

Smothering it.

 _(Ghost Heart)_

There was a living Darkness surrounding the figure, far worse than Maleficent. It was a Darkness separate from the contents of his Hearts, a Darkness that almost had a Heart of its own, or at least a mind.

She fought the urge to withdraw back to the imaginary play island.

Whatever happened next, Kairi had to be here for it if she ever wanted to be free. She couldn't afford to panic.

"Ah, I was wondering when you'd appear," Maleficent commented nonchalantly, as if she hadn't been checking in Kairi's room several times a day since she'd found her. "As you could no doubt deduce from my note, I have a few questions about the girl's state."

" _I see you haven't found her Heart yet,"_ The figure replied in a strange voice, like his speech was made of more thought than sound. As if he spoke directly into Kairi's head. He chuckled, _"What a surprise, I thought there wasn't much beyond a fairy's power."_

Maleficent stiffened slightly.

"Your previous assessment was correct: There isn't much at all beyond my power," She defended, "But Hearts are tricky things even for you."

" _Fair enough."_

"Anyway," she continued, "It's quite odd. I've never encountered this sort of predicament before, at least, not without me causing it. The only evidence I could find of what led her to this state was a lingering serendipity charm cast by a keyblade, but that shouldn't be possible. The only keyblade wielder I know of still in existence is a foolish child who couldn't conceivably be capable of such complicated magic."

The figure looked up sharply at this.

" _Cast by a keyblade, you say?"_

"Yes. I knew immediately from the signature."

For a long while the figure didn't speak. Kairi realized another thing about him as she looked closer: That there was no bulk of any arms or legs under his cloak from what she could tell, and only his head and torso seemed to make up whatever body the figure had. Not that she could see any details, the low light of the perpetual twilight outside and the lack of any other light in the room made it hard to see anything of his face beyond a featureless black mass.

The figure came over to look at her closer, and if Kairi could shudder she would. Still there was no details visible of his visage, not even a silhouette of his face. It only made him more unsettling.

" _I once encountered a situation that might be applicable to this."_

"Oh?" Maleficent asked hopefully as she moved closer, "Do tell."

" _He was an old friend—He and I had the sort of friendship that rises between rivals, foes, whatever term you prefer to call such camaraderie turned chicanery. I thought the time had come for me to defeat him, but he had a trick up his sleeve I couldn't have accounted for."_

"Why, isn't _that_ a surprise. A case of best laid plans, even for you."

At this, the figure angled his head slightly, and Kairi could tell he hadn't missed her note of derision. It appeared her pride was still stung from his earlier barb.

But he continued regardless, saying, _"In any case, he must have come across a student of his before his demise. For I later discovered my friend hid a tiny sliver of his Heart inside of his student's own, a fraction of himself so small that it very nearly escaped even my expertise in sensing."_

Maleficent studied Kairi's body intently at that.

"You're not saying this girl could have done something similar, are you?"

" _I am."_

She didn't look convinced.

"One would imagine such a feat to be possible only at the hands of a master, such as your friend."

The figure laughed out loud at this. It was a gravelly sound that reverberated in Kairi's mind as much as it did in her ears.

" _A master he was, but one as misguided as his apprentices. Nay, I am sure something similar must have occurred here. Perhaps not from the girl's own skill, but her status as a Princess of Heart may have had something to do with it."_

Maleficent furrowed her brows.

"None of the others I've found yet have been able to do the same, though. So how…?"

" _Have you been studying the reports?"_

She nodded.

"I have. So far, their wisdom has been invaluable to managing the heartless."

" _Then continue to look over them. You've been at this for close to a decade now, haven't you? Between the reports and your expertise, you'll have the answer eventually."_ He answered and began to move away.

"There was something else I wanted to ask." Maleficent added, before the figure could make his leave.

He looked back at her.

" _Yes?"_

"The other girl: Sora. She'sthe one with the keyblade, not the boy. Yet when I saw her I sensed no Mark of the Bequeathed on her Heart. How can she be the one to hold the keyblade?"

" _No Mark of the Bequeathed? Are you sure?"_

"I am certain."

At this, he went quiet again for several beats. And then, finally, he spoke.

" _Well. As you may have surmised from my tale of my old friend,"_ The figure said with some measure of amusement, _"Any fool can hold a keyblade."_

He looked away from them both at this, turning his shadowed head to the light of the setting sun.

" _But_ keeping _a keyblade…that takes everything."_

* * *

 **RIKU**

Usually Riku liked training.

At least, it was usually one of the more pleasant things to do here. Sparring with the heartless as his opponents could even be fun sometimes if he imagined hearing Sora's voice shouting comebacks at him between strikes. He could close his eyes and imagine the stone floor underneath had turned to sand, hearing the imaginary sighs of palm leaves rustling in the breeze, the call of cicadas and birds.

But today his thoughts wandered from thinking of recent times, in favor of a memory from long ago. Before Riku and Sora had seen the worlds outside of the islands.

As the years passed the memory had lost its golden glow, and the edges of it turned a little blurrier, but it was cherished regardless. But now, well, thinking of it stung a little. Especially whenever Riku looked down at Soul Eater.

 _The time and place was at sunset on Destiny Islands. Long before that fateful night when the skies would turn black, and the sand would split open like a hungering maw and rent itself in twain. Long before gnarled creatures with glowing yellow eyes set their feet upon the shore._

 _No, this was a time when both of the kids thought the islands were—or could be—a paradise._

" _Giving up already?" Riku teased, as Sora and him raced down the bridge of the play island side by side, "Come on, Sora!"_

" _That's enough, I can't run anymore!" She called out, but still managed to keep pace with the boy until they reached the bowed tree on the outlying islet and climbed on to watch the sunset._

 _Such was the case with days like these, filled with competitions of all kinds up and down the play island. Where you said you were done, but you were never really done, because there was always one more thing to compete on and one more chance to win. And such was the case with now._

 _Sora sat up first, looking over to her dad as he called them back for the day. Riku looked over slowly, only just realizing what time it was. He gnawed at his lip._

" _Ahoy! We're over here!" She shouted, standing up on the palm trunk. And with that she nudged the boy on the shoulder, daring, "Riku, race ya. First one on the boat gets to be captain!"_

 _She gave chase and was the first off of the tree and over the pier, calling over her shoulder, "Come on! You call that running?"_

 _Where she ran, he walked. Riku didn't mind losing this race._

 _It would be some time yet before Sora realized why he didn't bother with trying to get home quick, why he accepted her offers to sleep over so often, and why he came in on a new day with more scrapes and bruises than he'd had yesterday. For now she'd simply glossed over those things and considered them as 'just how Riku was', which he personally preferred. It was much easier to roll with that than the strange looks of pity Sora's parents gave him._

 _(Because Riku hadn't yet realized such things weren't normal, either.)_

 _Sora saw the man first. Her steps slowed to a shuffling canter as she wrenched her head over as far as she could to stare in curiosity, a bad habit her parents hadn't yet managed to break her of. And then, once he had reached where she was, Riku glanced over too to see what she saw. The man was strangely dressed, with two belts crossed over his chest locked together with a badge and a piece of what looked like armor affixed to his shoulder. He was busy looking out over the ocean. Riku hadn't seen anyone else look remotely similarly dressed to him on Destiny Islands._

 _With all lessons of the matters of not talking to strangers far from his mind, he decided to try talking to the man._

" _Hey," Riku called out, "You're not from the islands, are you."_

 _The man gave a start at that. "Huh? Why would you say that?"_

 _Riku angled his head. Did this guy really think he blended in?_

" _Because nobody lives out here. And I know you're not from the main island."_

 _He huffed out a laugh and replied, "Smart kid. So how about you? What are you doing here?_

" _My friend's dad took us out on the boat. This is where we like to play, but they won't let us row out here by ourselves. Not till we get older." Riku answered as he walked closer._

" _Must be hard, huh? Stuck in one place."_

 _The only response he could give the man's inquiry was a scuff of his shoe against the ground and a downcast glance. And as Riku moved towards the shore to look out towards the ocean, he could hear the man's shuffling against the sand to do the same._

" _I heard from the other kids that there was someone who left for good once, a really long time ago," Riku said wistfully. He turned to look up at him. "But nobody could ever figure out how he left. How did_ you _get here?"_

 _The man had a shaken look on his face, and Riku couldn't discern the reason for it._

" _Is there some reason you're interested in leaving?" He said instead, and Riku noticed how he declined to answer his question._

 _But the man had asked a better question in turn. Why did Riku want to leave? Everyone he talked to would say this place was a paradise, and if asked would say there was no reason to ever consider leaving. But the idea of never getting away, of growing old without ever seeing what laid beyond the waves, didn't sit right with Riku. He wrapped a hand around the fading yellow-green of his wrist, hidden beneath wristbands._

" _I wanna be strong one day. That kid who left—he's probably seen lots of stuff, learned lots about how to fight."_

 _The man wrinkled his brows at Riku. "To fight? What do you want to be strong for?"_

 _Riku absently watched the shore lap at his shoes, how small broken fragments of seashells danced with the ebb and flow. One pearlescent shard gave a tired purpling gleam that matched the approaching nightfall and nestled itself in the seafoam. He thought of Sora._

" _To protect the things that matter," Riku smiled. "You know, like my friends."_

 _Neither of them spoke for several minutes after that, and he let his thoughts be drowned out by the crash of the high tide coming in for the evening._

" _Outside this tiny world is a much bigger one."_

 _Riku looked up when the man had spoken, and he could feel his mouth fall open at the sight of a swirl of light spin forth in the man's grasp._

 _The light arranged itself into a circular pattern of whirling glimmers as he outstretched his hand, and with a hushed quaver the glow had settled into a remarkably long sword in the man's grip. It was quite stout, clearly made for powerful blows, and its blue and bronze form was capped off at the end with four teeth that made the sword look like a giant key._

 _Riku's eyes grew wide at the sight of the man kneeling down to his eye level and offering the sword._

" _I'm going to make you a promise," He began as he leveled Riku's gaze._

" _Yeah?"_

" _One day I'll come back to you and teach you everything I know. About how to reach the outside world, how to fight, how to become strong, everything." The man said, "But I need you to promise me something in return."_

 _Riku's eyes didn't look to the keyblade. They didn't stray to the ocean. He looked nowhere else but towards the man._

" _Anything," He murmured._

" _Promise me you won't lose sight of what's important. Fighting means nothing if you do it without a cause. Strength means nothing if you don't use it to protect what's important. And nothing in this world or outside of it will have any meaning to you if you forget the people who matter most. Do you understand?"_

" _I understand," Riku said as his voice wavered with awe. "I-I promise. I promise," He tried again after taking a deep breath. The man gave him a proud smile and began the fateful vow that would come to define Riku's life._

" _In your hand, take this key."_

He looked down at the sword in his hand.

A color palette of reds, blacks, and blues formed into a menacing bat's wing. No teeth at one end like the man's keyblade, no keychain at the other end. Just a small green-blue eye embedded in the hilt that stared back at him in the half-light of Hollow Bastion.

He'd kept the secret just as he was asked. He had remembered his cause, used the strength Maleficent had given him for good, and he remembered the people who had mattered most.

Even when it seemed like those same people had forgotten about him.

No. _No._ Riku shook his head forcefully to clear those thoughts away. Sora hadn't forgotten him at all, she couldn't. Not when they were practically joined at the hip since before they could walk. She was just distracted is all.

 _Distracted with that keyblade,_ that old Dark corner of his mind whispered.

 _Your keyblade._

And Riku had no rebuttal for that.

* * *

 **SORA**

"Oh, wow!" She said as she ran past the colonnade on the outskirts of where they had parked the gummi ship. "Do you guys see this huge gate?"

The architecture of the whole place was sprawling. It was as if this place was built for giants, with two statues of soldiers with their swords drawn towards the sky flagging the entrance, which was an enormous set of doors engraved with insignias of lightning bolts. All around them people milled to and fro, and Sora saw that most of them were wearing draped robes in a spectrum of colors.

But some others looked as out of place as Sora, Donald, and Goofy did. Like the stern looking woman with pink hair and odd clothes that was talking to some moogles that were excitedly crowding around her, while her companions milled about—including a red-haired girl with pigtails and an outfit that was bedecked with beads with a fur pelt tied around her waist, and a woman wielding a staff with a rich blue tapestry wrapped around her outfit. For a moment Sora's pulse skipped a beat, as she thought she saw Riku with them, but she quickly realized the silver-haired boy with the group looked nothing like him at second glance.

She closed her eyes. Why had Riku run off so quickly there at the end of their meeting? Was he mad?

 _Just like on the islands,_ Sora thought to herself. Where he'd get mad for no reason and avoid any attempts to communicate. She had hoped he would move past that habit with the fall of Destiny Islands and their being separated, but Sora supposed those things took time.

"Gawrsh, they're almost as big as the palace gates back home!" Goofy exclaimed, inadvertently interrupting Sora's thoughts.

"No way, the palace gates are bigger than that," Donald snorted, as the three of them walked up.

Sora pushed open the doors with a grunt, and the stone material made a grinding noise against the floor.

The lobby was spacious, and mostly empty. Apart from the trio only a few others wandered around the area, all of them dressed oddly. None of the people outside who looked to be natives were in here. On the far wall a short squat satyr stood on a pedestal and was busy drafting a list of rules ostensibly for the tournament the moogles mentioned earlier. He would likely know something, Sora thought as she walked over to him.

"Hey, um, excuse me?" Sora tried, but the satyr didn't bother looking up as they approached.

He lazily waved his hand towards the middle of the room, still clutching the chalk. "Good timing. Give me a hand, will ya? Move that pedestal over there for me."

She looked to where he was gesturing and shrugged. The task seemed easy enough.

Sora walked over to the pedestal and planted her feet on the floor, expecting some resistance from the heavy stone.

But she had underestimated it.

The pedestal was beyond heavy, it was immovable. The soles of her shoes had some traction against the floor but not enough, and she first tried pushing it with her hands, and then shoved her back up against it with her shoes grinding against the floor all the while.

Sora only gave up when she nearly slipped the second her foot lost traction and managed to grip onto the pedestal just in time to catch herself. She threw a scowl at Donald when she could hear him snickering, but the effect was ruined by her being out of breath.

"It's way too heavy!" She hollered at the satyr, who dropped the chalk he was holding with a jerk.

"What?! Too heavy?" He jeered and rounded on her. "Hercules! Since when have you been such a little—Oh. Wrong guy. What are you doing here?"

"We wanted to join the fighting tournament!" Sora said proudly.

Beside her, an ignored Donald grumbled, "Don't include _me_ in that statement."

The satyr laughed. "What, some pansies like you? The hoi polloi and some wimp who can't even move a pedestal?"

He turned serious suddenly, and walked towards the pedestal as he continued, "Listen up! This here's the world-famous Coliseum, heroes only! And I already got my hands full preparing for the games this afternoon, so…run…along…" The satyr grunted as he tried to move the pedestal himself, to no avail. He fitfully kicked the pedestal with his hoof and sucked in a gasp as he held the now-pained limb.

"Botched toe! I botched that one! Ah, I think it's bleedin'." He said as he let go of it for a moment to check his hoof. The satyr then looked to the three. "Don't suppose y'all got any trash I can plug up this cut with?"

"Trash?" Goofy wondered aloud.

Sora rifled in her pockets. "I think I got a candy wrapper if you give me a sec."

Only Donald was the one to provide a solution. He had a prideful air as he cast a cure spell on the satyr, who let go of his hoof as it was healed.

"You've got heroes standing right in front of you," Donald replied smugly, as the satyr gave him an obstinate glance.

"You tell 'em, Donald," Sora cheered from beside him.

"Yup!" Goofy agreed as he wrapped a hand around her shoulders boastfully, "And here's a real hero chosen by the keyblade!"

"Hero? That runt?" He barked out a laugh. "Look, I know it takes more than brawn, I know I'm no Chiron myself. But this half-pint sure ain't no Atalanta either! Come back when you got an entry pass!"

"How do we get one?" Goofy asked, and the satyr laughed again.

"Last one was distributed yesterday. Good luck finding another."

And with that, the trio left in a sullen mood and sat themselves on the entryway stairs to the Coliseum, watching visitors and natives to the world alike run along busily.

"Well that was a bust," Sora groused as she summoned the keyblade to her hand and looked at it sadly.

Donald was livid. "Who does he think he is?" He seethed, small sparks flying out from his staff despite himself.

"I'm sure he thinks he's the crème de la crème," A new voice answered, and they looked up to see a tall man with pointed features and blue skin leaning on the platform for the entryway. Blue flames licked at his head, forming an impromptu hairstyle. "But really, he's a stubborn old goat, wouldn't you say?"

"And who are you?" Donald asked. The man shuffled closer, the hems of his black chiton rippling with a near-invisible pattern with every step.

"Woah, hold on there fuzz-boy. Now let me guess," He said as he jerked his chin to Sora, "You want to enter the games. Right?"

"Yeah," She replied.

"Well then," He outstretched a hand, which was quickly surrounded by a glowing blue light, " _Zoop!_ One entry pass to go, half-caf, no foam and extra soy. Knock yourself out kid," He amended after a moment, "Not literally, of course."

"A pass?" Sora looked up at him with astonishment as she reached for the piece of paper and held it aloft, "Can I really have this?"

He nodded. "It's all yours. Good luck, short stuff."

Before they knew it, the man was gone as quickly as he arrived, and the three lost sight of him in the crowd almost instantly.

They leaned over to look at the pass. Sora tilted it back and forth to see small stylized lightning bolts shimmer on the golden paper. Beside a signature in the corner was stamped the words 'ENTRY PASS'.

 _Huh,_ she thought. _Okay._ And without too much more discussion on the matter, the trio decided to go back inside and try again.

The moment they had brought the pass back to the satyr, he snatched it out of Sora's hand and inspected every inch of it dumbfoundedly.

"No way. How did you get ahold of this pass?"

Goofy opened his mouth to tell him about the man they'd met, but Donald hurriedly waved for him to stop. Sora spoke up.

"We can enter the games now, right?"

He looked back and forth between Sora and the entry pass for several seconds, his expression growing more suspicious as he did so. And finally, the satyr sighed.

"Fine." He relented and raised a hand to jab his finger at them upon speaking his next words. "But this is gonna be a trial by fire, got it? I gotta make sure you're all prepared for the prelims this afternoon, no holding back!"

Sora could feel the corner of her mouth start to curl upward.

"Don't worry about it," She replied, "We're heroes. We got what it takes."

He scoffed. "We'll see about that."

* * *

 **KAIRI**

It wasn't long after the hooded figure left that Maleficent did too.

As she closed the door behind her and Kairi waited to be sure nobody else would come in, alternating glances through her own eyes and Sora's, did Kairi finally pull away and make her way back to that white room where the boy slept.

She paced in large circles around the chamber. Kairi could feel her stomach doing gymnastics with anxiety.

"That guy with the hood," Kairi's voice faltered, and she tried again. "That guy with the hood, I've never seen his Hearts before. I shouldn't be able to remember them."

There was the sensation of pinpricks climbing up her spine.

"But I do."

She stopped walking for a moment and looked to the boy.

"And his Darkness, how—how _alive_ it felt," Kairi shuddered as the pinpricks grew stronger, "I don't think I've ever seen anything like that. But it was familiar too. What _was_ that guy?"

"They said I lost my Heart. But that doesn't make any sense," She put a hand to her chin as she resumed pacing again. "I'm still here. I'm still okay, or at least as okay as I can be without being able to use my own body. Is that what they're referring to? I'm still able to see and hear out of it though."

"They also keep referring to me as a Princess of Heart. First Maleficent and now that guy. Wait, no," She corrected herself as she remembered, "The door did too."

"Back on Destiny Islands, when it asked me for help. It was going on about it like I'd be able to fix whatever went wrong and made us lose our world. Like I'd be able to fix its Heart."

Kairi gave a bitter laugh.

"So much for that one. I didn't even realize worlds could have Hearts."

"There's got to be _something_ useful about being a Princess of Heart, though," Kairi reasoned, trying to ignore her resurfacing dread. "Otherwise there'd be no reason for them taking me. Is it because I can talk to Sora? Well, sort of, but is that why they wanted me? No, no, that can't be it."

"Unless there was something else about being a Princess of Heart that could be handy. Maybe like how I can see people's Hearts?" She wrung her hands uselessly, "It feels like that'd be useless to them. Both of them indicated they had some ability to sense people's Hearts on their own. But that's interesting, too—I never met anyone else able to do what I could do."

She could feel the corners of her lips twitch.

"That's another thing I can't let Sora and Riku live down. Or at least, I can't let Riku live that down. Trying to tell me I'm 'just pretending'," Kairi huffed.

"But that other thing they talked about," She said, referring once more to Maleficent and the hooded figure, "That story. What the guy said about his friend who hid a piece of his Heart in another's. I didn't know something like that was even _possible_."

Kairi stopped pacing.

"But it does make sense. It would help explain why he had…two Hearts…" She trailed off as she looked to the boy, a thought occurring to her. He slept on obliviously.

"…And why Sora has two Hearts, too."

* * *

 **SORA**

"Buck up! What are ya, one of Penelope's geese?" Philoctetes, or Phil, as he allowed when none of them could pronounce it correctly, cried as he spurred Donald on through the obstacle course. "We ain't got all day!"

"I'm a duck, mind you, and I'd get through this faster if you let me keep my staff!" He shouted back, and gave an unintelligible curse as he tripped over the edge of a stone wheel as he hopped his way through its duplicates. Up ahead, Sora and Goofy were making their way through a rope net to the next round of platforms, already halfway through the course.

"Magic's not always the solution, buckaroo!" Phil stomped a hoof, "What are ya gonna do when you lose your staff in a fight? Shake your tail feathers at them?"

Donald shot a small spark at the satyr from his fingertip, but it was nowhere near as powerful as the bolts he could throw with his staff in hand. He spluttered out an angry noise and outstretched a hand to the sky, yelling " _Summonga!"_

And with a clamor from the side of the nearly empty arena, the staff whirled through the air towards his hand. As it landed, Donald gave a victorious spark of electricity, much stronger this time, and turned to Phil with a triumphant gleam in his eye.

"I can do that."

Phil squinted at him, and his frown shifted to something more appraising as he stroked his beard. "Alright. I can respect that. Heroes need to be quick-thinking, at least in a way that doesn't destroy the obstacles!" He ended with a shout and a pointed look to Sora, who scratched her head sheepishly.

"Didn't think a fire spell could backfire like that!" She looked away for a moment as she finished climbing the rope net, and said, "Pun unintended. But I put it out!"

"Good thing the vigiles urbani were on standby for the tournament already," Phil shook his head, and then straightened up and called them over.

"You ain't heroes yet, but you guys ain't doin' too bad. Lucky you came to me for coaching," He started, "A few hours and you're all showing potential already: Quick thinkin', adaptable, could be stronger, but hey! Being strong doesn't make you a hero. It's what you do with it that counts."

"It's in the Heart!" Goofy recited perfectly. Phil nodded.

"Exactly. Brawns or not, you gotta have a strong Heart to be a hero."

"But what makes a strong Heart?" Sora asked.

"If you have to ask," A new voice answered from the edge of the arena, "You're not a hero yet."

Phil spun around with a dazzling smile.

"Hercules!"

"Hey, Phil. I'm done cleaning the Coliseum toilets," Hercules gestured back over his shoulder with a thumb and hefted a bucket of cleaning supplies with his other hand.

Phil quickly turned to the trio excitedly and said, "Let me introduce you the man who's the most popular hero around here. Hercules! Stealer of apples, slayer of hydras and Nemean lions, yadda yadda yadda. Believe me, this guy's capable of anything—Wait, did you say you were cleaning toilets?" He cut himself off with a confused expression to look back at Hercules.

"Yeah. That's what you asked me to do, remember?" He blinked, and then chuckled. "Nowhere near as bad as Augeas' stables. _Man_ was that guy a piece of work."

"Can't believe I made a hero clean toilets!" Phil laughed.

Hercules took a second to pull out a clipboard he had stashed away in his cleaning bucket.

"I also checked over the entry list," He said as he scanned the pages, "There seems to be a large number of strange first-timers. I wonder where they got their tickets."

"There were some real weirdos strolling about earlier," Phil agreed, "Lotsa them got tickets, I didn't realize we sold so many."

As the two chatted on the matter, Sora gave a nervous smile and tried to look as unsuspecting as possible. Beside her, her friends did the same.

"Think he suspects anything?" She asked out of the side of her mouth.

Donald shrugged.

"He sure seemed to accept us just fine," Goofy replied as he fiddled with his shield. "Wonder 'bout the others Phil mentioned."

"Who was that guy that gave us the ticket, anyway?" Donald whispered.

"Maybe one of the weird first-timers they're talking about?" Sora shrugged, "He certainly looked strange: His hair was made of fire."

"Wonder if that was his ticket he gave to us, then," Donald wondered. But before any of them could speak further, Phil clapped his hands and the trio composed themselves.

"Okay! Prelims are comin' up in," He started as he looked down at the small sundial wristwatch on his arm, and upon seeing the time he reeled. "Thirty minutes?!" At this, Phil started desperately waving them towards the side entrance to the arena. "You slowpokes better go get ready. You'll be getting your numbers in a little bit for your rounds."

"Fine," Sora sighed as she walked a little faster. She called back to Phil, "Hey, when's the actual tournament?"

"Tomorrow!" He answered distractedly, before hurrying off. Sora turned to Donald, her next question already in mind.

"Absolutely not. We're not staying here more than a day." Donald shook his head rapidly.

"But—"

" _No._ "

"Hey, uh, guys?" Goofy asked uncertainly. They looked up at him simultaneously.

"What?"

"Are y'all seein' heartless in line, or is that just me?" He pointed, and they looked to where he was indicating. And both Donald and Sora let out expressions of surprise.

Because right down the corridor and clustered up between the other fighters in line were more than a few heartless, just as Goofy had said.

* * *

 **RIKU**

"My goodness," Maleficent said from somewhere behind him, and Riku quickly shifted his stance into something more defensive to parry his heartless sparring mate's cutlass before turning around. She raised a brow at him. "You're quite inspired today. Might I ask why?"

Riku blinked.

 _He let go of the handle to the man's keyblade, the oath taken, and the ceremony completed._

" _Riku!" Sora called from the pier, unaware of the ceremony taking place. "C'mon, hurry it up!"_

 _Riku could see her impatiently stomping her foot onto the wooden boards even from where he and the man stood all the way across the shore. He smiled again, wider this time, and waved her off. Before Riku could say a word, the man leaned over and gently squeezed his shoulder._

" _You've gotta keep this a secret, okay?" He said, and when the boy looked back towards him confused, he clarified, "Otherwise all the magic will wear off."_

"It's nothing," He shook his head a bit more strongly than he needed to, in efforts to clear the reverie from his thoughts. "What is it?"

The only times Maleficent ever bothered to intrude on his sparring, she had a reason for. Typically the most she would ever do was come in from time to time to silently watch and assess his progress. Or at least, that was the explanation Riku told himself as he'd never bothered to ask her why outright. It helped give a reason for why he always got the feeling she was seeing right into his soul—into his Heart—every time she did.

Diablo fixed his beady eye on Riku from his seat on Maleficent's shoulder. The bird was quiet today.

"You've discussed wanting to be reunited with your friends, yes?" She asked.

He shifted his posture slightly. Where was she going with this?

"Is this about Sora?"

Riku's voice came out more unsure than he intended, but Maleficent didn't give any indication of noticing.

"No, dear boy, your other friend. I believe you mentioned one with short red hair?"

He looked down in genuine shock. Riku was ashamed to admit to himself that he hadn't thought of Kairi much at all in his time off of the islands, even after Sora asked about her in their reunion.

"Kairi?" Riku spluttered, "Wait, what happened? Did you get news on her?"

"Better than just news," Maleficent turned to leave the room as she gestured to him, saying, "Come. Follow me."

She waved a hand to the heartless, wordlessly dismissing them from their bout with Riku. The creatures immediately acquiesced and left the room in a variety of ways, with some leaving through Dark portals and others leaving the room by foot. The ones who chose the latter method followed after the two for some time before finding their next whereabouts, and before Riku knew it he and Maleficent were alone on their walk to the bailey of Hollow Bastion.

When Maleficent didn't volunteer to continue talking, he decided to instead.

"Did you find her?" Riku asked, "Are you taking me to her now?"

It was an obvious question, he admonished himself inwardly, but she give any indication that she minded it.

She glanced to him and said slyly, "Indeed I am," Maleficent turned her gaze back to the darkened hallways as his expression went incredulous. "Such was the information my friend had provided, and the reason why we went off to Traverse Town in the first place. You see, I learned her body was discovered there."

Riku stopped in his tracks.

It didn't take Maleficent long to notice he had stopped following her, and the second she did she and Diablo both turned their heads around towards him.

"Yes? What is it?"

"Her body?" Riku asked, his voice scratchy from his mouth suddenly feeling as dry as sawdust. "Is she _dead?_ "

"Heavens, child, no," She replied immediately, and his shoulders sagged in relief. "Here, I'll show you. The door's right over there."

Looking to where she was pointing, Riku walked quickly to the door she had indicated: It was indistinguishable in the midst of every other door in the hallway, its wooden form carved with the same motifs of roses and thorned vines that marked every other inch of this place. He held the handle for a moment in hesitation. Maleficent's robes rustled as she came up behind him.

She angled her head at him. Riku could hear her unspoken question: _Well? Aren't you going to open it?_

He tightened his grip on the doorknob in efforts to work up the nerve, feeling the cold metal slowly warm up under his hand.

And then, slowly, he opened the door.

* * *

 **SORA**

"And the winner of the final prelim match is…Cloud."

Sora could hear her pulse thumping in her ears, coming close to drowning out Phil's words. Not that it mattered, she knew full well what it meant to have her back to the floor and the edge of a sword in her face anyway. Sora glanced to either side of the arena, the overlarge sword looming in her vision.

Donald and Goofy were long since knocked out cold, having been hit with some unlucky (or lucky, she supposed, for Cloud) strikes to the backs of their heads that made them black out. And it didn't take long after her friends were out for Sora to be finished off as well. She had never encountered a swordsman so skilled. Not even Riku could have matched him, Sora was sure.

Cloud still didn't move, continuing to hold the sword in her face. He scrutinized her over the brim of his tattered scarf.

"Um, ya know you're supposed to let 'em go when the match is called, right?" Phil laughed nervously as he looked between the two of them. Her opponent gave no indication that he heard the satyr.

"Trying to get rid of some kid like you," Cloud remarked, "What is Hades up to?"

At that, he looked to the keyblade still in her hand, her grip on it loosened. He studied it.

"What's this? Some kind of toy?"

Her face reddened with anger, and before Sora could bite out a reply the sky began to darken. They both looked up.

And as her pulse quieted in her ears, Sora realized she could hear the audience screaming.

It was a dog. But it wasn't like any dog Sora had ever seen, and certainly not anything like that cartoonish dog she encountered when she woke up in Traverse Town that very first time. This was a beast with three heads and teeth taller than Goofy, and as sharp as the sword Cloud quickly dropped from his hand upon catching sight of the animal. The sword was so heavy it made a small tremor as it clattered against the ground.

The second her opponent's sword was away from her face Sora scrambled to sit upright, and then she rose to her feet with her keyblade at the ready. Donald and Goofy were still passed out, she realized with worry. If she had to fight this…whatever this dog was, Sora was afraid she wouldn't be able to get them out of the arena in time. And then, one of the dog's heads lunged at her and Cloud.

She wrenched her eyes shut as she raised her keyblade to guard, her face screwing with the expectation of pain.

But the pain never came.

Sora opened an eye at the sound of a whining yelp and opened both eyes when she realized what happened.

Before her and Cloud, barely visible past the waves of Darkness simmering from the creature's mouths, stood Hercules. He had punched the middle head, the one who dared to try and make the first move, right in the nose, and the unearthly dog recoiled in pain as its other two heads angled forward to take their companion's place.

"Phil!" Hercules yelled, "Get them out of here!"

"You got it, Herc!" The satyr replied, and raced on his stubby little hooves to make sure the crowds of spectators desperately trying to make their escape didn't cause a stampede. Phil looked to Sora, and yelled, "Kid! Get you and your pals outta here!"

She didn't need to be told twice. Sora dismissed her keyblade to have both hands free and grabbed Donald and slung him over her shoulder, while making sure his staff was in her hand. Grabbing Goofy was a little harder, with only one hand available, and as she dodged the three-headed dog's footfalls she clipped the handle to his shield onto his back holster and dragged him by it, grimacing slightly from the strain of pulling them towards the exit to the side of the arena where Phil went.

A flash of blue flames out of the corner of her eye made Sora turn to look around, but she didn't see anything apart from the last onlookers making their way out of the arena where Cerberus and Hercules were now fighting. Cloud was nowhere to be seen, but his overlarge sword was still in the arena towards the side, where it had been tossed out of the way. She made her way out of the arena and back into the lobby, noticing how Donald seemed to be stirring finally.

She deposited them against the wall and slunk down to the floor herself, watching as the spectators who hadn't decided to leave for the day milled about. In the crowd, she could see some of the other participants in the preliminaries among them.

"What was that thing?" Sora asked Phil, who had been standing nearby.

"That was Cerberus, the guardian of the Underworld," Phil answered, "Hercules should be able to finish it off in a second or two."

"A second or two?" Donald echoed skeptically, and Sora saw him staggering to his feet. She handed him his staff back, which he took gratefully. Beside Donald Sora could see Goofy was beginning to wake up too.

"You missed it, that thing was huge!" Sora told him, "It had three heads, I'd never seen a dog like that before."

"Of course it ain't any ordinary dog, it's Hades'!" Phil cried.

"Who _is_ Hades?" Sora asked, "Cloud mentioned him too."

Phil's surprise was written all over his face. "What? What did he say?"

"He said—" Sora began, but was quickly cut off by the lobby rumbling ominously. From outside, she could hear a vicious bark before a gnashing sound. All of them looked to the exit at this, with Goofy waking up finally for good at the noise.

"Gawrsh, that doesn't sound good," Goofy murmured, "Where's Hercules?"

"Outside," She replied, her tone coming out hesitant. Judging by Donald's expression, he felt the same way.

"Can he take them on alone?"

"Doesn't sound like it," Sora scowled, and got up as she summoned her keyblade back. Phil's eyes widened.

"Kid, where are you going?"

"I'm going to help Hercules."

"What?" Phil exclaimed, "This ain't just some match, this is for real!"

"I know! I'm not afraid," Sora gripped her keyblade and slung it over her shoulder, saying with a cocky glance, "You can decide if I'm hero material or not later."

Donald was the next one to get up, and after downing one of the elixirs in his pockets he asked, "Sora, how come you always have to go running head first into these sorts of things?"

"The whole point of our mission is to help people, right? I'm helping."

"Then we're going with ya, ahyuk!" Goofy asserted, swaying on his feet a bit. Donald handed him an elixir, too.

"All for one and one for all," She commented with a quiet smile, and ducked her head. As the three walked out back to the arena, Sora could hear Hercules' sandals scrape against the pavement, the guttural rumbling of Cerberus' jaws as it gnashed its many teeth. She walked faster.

Her efforts were rewarded with the sight of an empty arena save for Hercules and his opponent. And, she realized as she looked closer, Cloud, whose comatose form was slung over Hercules' shoulder as he tried to use his other arm to land whatever blows he could on the beast.

Hercules wouldn't be able to last much longer against Cerberus, she thought. Not when he was constrained by having only one arm available and having to keep Cloud from getting hurt worse.

She had to help.

"Hercules!" She yelled, and he immediately looked over to them, seeing that they were ready to fight. "We'll take it from here!"

Sora raised her keyblade in ready for an attack and burst forward without waiting for an answer, hearing her companions scamper along behind. At her shout Cerberus turned its heads towards her, its mean threefold gaze ensuring nothing good.

Hercules relaxed somewhat when it turned its attention from him, but he looked as if he were considering protesting, and then seemed to change his mind. Hercules readjusted his hold on Cloud and darted from the arena to safety.

"Kid! I got two words of advice for ya," Phil shouted from behind them, as the trio readied their weapons. " _Attack!_ "

* * *

 **RIKU**

His world went still. All he could do was stare.

Kairi lay on the bed with her eyes half open, unfocused, unseeing. Through the window a wavering beam of sunlight poured through and lit up the room as best it could, starkly bright in some areas and shadowed in the rest. Motes of dust lit up by what light there was danced in circles around her hair, forming a makeshift halo. A small spider made its way over her leg.

Seeing it was what finally brought Riku back to earth. He strode across the room and flicked the spider away, and it tumbled off the side of the bed and continued its path elsewhere.

Riku glanced to her face, which was unchanged.

Kairi didn't give any sort of indication that she was aware anything had occurred.

"She's only asleep is all."

He turned back to Maleficent, suddenly remembering she was in the room as well. She was watching the interaction closely. Almost too closely.

"Asleep?" He glanced back and forth between her and Kairi, "How did this happen?"

"The poor dear lost her Heart," Maleficent answered.

"Lost her Heart," Riku repeated doubtfully, "Wouldn't that make a heartless?"

He looked to Kairi again. She didn't have any features familiar to a heartless at all. No glowing yellow eyes or even a heartless emblem. Nothing. She looked just like any other person apart from being comatose.

Maleficent chuckled and answered, "Not in this case. Something different from the usual method happened to make her lose her Heart, and it's what put her into this state."

"How did she lose her Heart?"

"That's the very same question I've been trying to find the answer to," She replied, drawing closer. Riku noticed that Diablo was gone. Perhaps he had flown away at some point on the walk over without being noticed. "There isn't much to go off of in regard to clues, sadly. But the sooner I learn more of her condition the sooner I might find a way to fix it."

 _The sooner I might find a way to fix it_ , she said. The words echoed in his mind as he looked to Kairi's slackened expression. Her comatose body, with the instinct-driven rise and fall of her lungs the only indicator that she was even alive.

Riku tasted bile on the back of his tongue. Here he was, too afraid to even do his assignments correctly, still too afraid of Darkness to use it properly and help bring balance. And Kairi lost her Heart because of it. He was sure of that. What was wrong with him?

"So Kairi's like a lifeless puppet now?" Riku asked as he sank onto the bed. Kairi's body shifted slightly with the movement, but it was obvious it wasn't voluntary. Merely the actions of gravity. "If she never gets her Heart back…she'll be asleep forever? Like this?"

Maleficent nodded gravely.

"Precisely."

There was only one question on his mind.

"What can I do to help?"

* * *

 **SORA**

The moment Phil uttered the word, the trio burst forth.

Goofy readied his shield, unclipping it from his holster in one unusually smooth movement for the normally clumsy fighter, while Donald's staff gave off writhing waves of heat in ready for a fire spell. Whatever may come, they were ready to face.

And Sora? Sora lunged.

She climbed onto a foot, and Cerberus reactively recoiled it, unwittingly helping Sora by bringing her closer. And just like with the giant heartless she had faced that fateful night on Destiny Islands, where there was nothing left of her world but that small patch of sand and rubble from the play island, nobody left but her and her enemy, she ran up Cerberus' leg.

There was a perfect clarity in Sora's mind then. No distraction, no thinking, just her and her objective.

She ran up to the beast's elbow—or whatever the equivalent to an elbow there was for a dog—ignoring the gnashing jaws of the surrounding heads and the shouts of her friends. Sora reared back her keyblade and time felt as if it were slowing down. Cerberus continued raising its leg, higher, preparing to try shaking her off.

At the closest point, when the middle head's teeth were frothing at the corners and threatening to gnaw her in two, Sora jumped again with her keyblade raised high.

And she could feel it strike hard against Cerberus' nose.

The effect was immediate: All three heads gave a deafening whine that threatened to blow out her ear drums from how close she was to Cerberus, and the beast began to fall to the ground. Sora scrambled to get off before it could crush her, and she jumped to the floor sloppily and let out a hiss of pain as her ankle rolled. And with a tremor that shook the entire arena, Cerberus collapsed to the ground and passed out.

For a full minute the trio stopped in place, staring at the fallen beast.

"Did I…did I defeat it in one hit?" She asked uncertainly, "It's not moving anymore."

"No way," Donald answered as he shook his head, "Couldn't have."

"I dunno, you guys," Goofy wondered. "What if Sora did?"

"Remember the armor in Traverse Town we thought we defeated? How it got back up again?"

"Yeah, but that was a heartless," Sora replied, "This, uh, isn't a heartless? I think? It used Darkness though."

They continued staring at it. Finally, Phil poked his head out of the side entrance to the arena.

"What are you guys doing standing around?"

"Is it knocked out?" Sora asked.

"Sure looks knocked out to me," Phil shrugged.

Sora's eyes slowly grew to the size of dinner plates. She shared an overjoyed look with Donald and Goofy.

"I defeated it in one hit," She breathed, "I defeated it in one hit!"

Sora sped to the Coliseum lobby, and her friends followed.

"I defeated Cerberus in one hit! _I defeated Cerberus in one hit!_ " She repeated as she ran in and nearly bumped into Hercules, who was at that point talking to an amused-looking woman in a purple toga that matched her eyeshadow.

"—Already wore it down by the time they jumped in," He shrugged, "Too bad, they must have been disappointed when—Hey!" Hercules looked between the three of them with a quizzical look. "You guys look excited, what happened?"

"I did it! I knocked out Cerberus in a single blow!" Sora cheered, and jumped in the air. "Ain't it great?! Woo!"

Both Hercules and the woman's lips twitched, with the woman sputtering out a laugh before she could bite it back. "Hey, that's great, kid!" Hercules tried, his lips still twitching despite his efforts, "Awesome job!"

Sora, oblivious, turned to Phil. "Does this make me a hero now? Oh gosh, I bet it does, doesn't it? Am I a hero?"

Donald tapped his foot impatiently. "We were there too," He griped, "So that makes us heroes, too!"

"Now hold on just a minute," Phil objected, "As indicated in rule fifty-one, don't get a swelled ego. You hear me? You're still—"

But Sora wasn't listening. She was already whipping her head around, looking around the lobby. And finally she found what she was looking for.

"I bet I'm strong enough to move that pedestal!" She exclaimed, jogging towards the stone block she had encountered earlier. She gripped it, planted her feet, and began to push. It struggled to budge. Sora grunted, "C'mon! Move, you!"

"What did I just tell you?" Phil cried, but his words fell on deaf ears as Sora felt the stone begin to shift.

"Hey, it moved!" She grinned, and movement from both sides finally made her look around. Donald and Goofy had moved to either side of her and were helping her push the pedestal. "Huh?"

"There's no rule saying we can't help you, is there?" Goofy beamed.

From her other side, Donald matched his expression. "Now push! One, two, three!"

On his mark, the trio shoved, and the pedestal slowly budged forward. And then, Sora felt it before she saw it: A small keyhole that was hidden beneath where the pedestal was and had finally been revealed.

"Woah, wait guys, stop!" She waved them off, and the two let go of the pedestal. Sora pointed down.

"The keyhole!" Goofy said in surprise.

"So _that's_ why we encountered those heartless in the preliminaries," Donald slapped his fist against his open palm. "They were really after this!"

"Wait, wait, wait, what are you guys doing?" Phil budged in and peered down at the keyhole. "When did this get here? What did you guys call those things?"

"Heartless. Those were the monsters us and all of the contestants faced for the first several rounds," Sora explained, "We were wondering why they showed up here. They're actually after the keyhole. Don't worry, I can seal this right up for you and they won't bother you again."

She had barely had her keyblade back out and ready to go before Phil waved his arms again to stop.

"Now wait one minute!" He said as they turned back towards to him. "You're tellin' me those things will go away for good if you seal this thingamajig?"

"Keyhole," Sora corrected, "And yeah."

Phil stamped a hoof. "Can't let ya do that."

Sora, Donald, and Goofy all gave him askance looks.

"Why?" Donald asked suspiciously.

"Because!" Phil answered, "Those things are way too useful to train up and coming heroes with, and to use as canon fodder in prelims like earlier!"

Sora angled her head. "But if they get to this keyhole, the whole world will fall to pieces," She said, "You don't want your world to end, do you?"

"'Course not," He replied, "But it'll be fine, Hercules here can take on anything. Won't you, Herc?" Phil finished, looking up at Hercules, who was shaking his head.

"Phil, just let them have this one. We'll just go back to the targets we used before, don't worry about it. Maybe I can talk to my dad about coming up with something new."

"I, but—" He started, and heaved a sigh as he threw up his hands. "Fine! Fine, alright, you win. Seal the darn thing."

Without further ado, Sora raised her keyblade towards the ceiling, and watched as it gathered starbursts of Light around its tip. The floor vibrated slightly as the keyhole locked, and with a trilling chime the keyhole to the Coliseum was shut.

"So, what was all that light? And whatever that key thing did?" Phil asked, and the trio shuffled nervously at the prospects of saying anything more. It was bad enough they had to talk about the heartless and the keyhole already.

"I, well, um…" Sora started, but found herself unable to come up with an answer that didn't risk telling more than she should. Then again, she thought, it looked like a whole bunch of people from all sorts of worlds visited this place, judging by the other contestants she saw earlier. So maybe she could risk divulging something?

But before she could think more on it, Hercules spoke up.

"It must be some kind of magical power," He said, "I tried moving that pedestal before, but I couldn't do it."

"What? Really? You?" Phil asked in disbelief, and Hercules nodded.

"You three have some sort of a power that can't be achieved alone," He said, and a thoughtful expression spread across his face. "That's something really special. I still have a lot to learn."

The woman he was talking to as the trio arrived after defeating Cerberus, the woman with the purple toga, came back up to the group and tapped Hercules on the arm.

"Hey, Wonder Boy," She grinned, "I heard a racket coming from the men's toilets. I thought you cleaned them?"

"I did. Something probably broke," He shrugged, and began to walk towards the restrooms, "I'll go check it out. But one more thing," Hercules turned and pointed a finger at the trio, saying, "I better see you guys in the next tournament!"

"We'll be there," Sora promised.

Donald added, "Next time you see us, you'll be calling every one of us a hero!"

Phil put his hands on his hips.

"Ya know what?" Phil said.

Sora pouted, already expecting him to reject the idea. "What?"

But instead he said, "I'm looking forward to that."

And with those words, the group shared a smile.

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTES**

Best thing about ADHD? It can take only two days to write an 18k chapter if you're excited as all heck about what's in it. Like last chapter. Worst thing about ADHD? If you're *not* excited about what's in a chapter, like this one (it's just filler material for the most part, I'm so sorry), it can take 12 days to crap out a chapter that's just under 11k :(

Sorry bout that. Again. _(:c」∠)_ And super sorry to give you false hopes with my tumblr post, I underestimated my writer's block.

So if this is just mostly filler material, why do the chapter in the first place? Well, I kinda had to work in the whole Riku-discovers-what-happened-to-Kairi thing somehow, and it made much more sense to do it in this chapter to help explain the things he does in the next chapter where things are a little less filler and a little more interesting for character development! That and I also had to introduce Olympus at some point because for some reason Nomura wants to shoehorn it in every. Single. Game! So I had to introduce its whole plotline over the course of the games.

Also because I had to do a little more preparation for DDD and KH3's plots so they'd make more sense as the time comes. *Ba-dum tsssh*

So! Without further ado, the notes:

1\. Heck yeah, I threw in an IASIP reference! I'm going to find a way to work _as many as I freaking can_ in every single time Phil shows up in this series.

2\. Penelope's geese is a reference to the Odyssey. I also listed off some of Hercules' tasks from his legend here cuz, well, why not?

3\. The Vigiles Urbani were technically ancient Rome, I know, *not* Greece, but eeeehhh (ง ื▿ ื)ว

4\. I guess that Lightning cameo came in earlier than I thought! And the Vanille and Fang cameo, and the Hope cameo. Lightning may get a minor speaking role later on, I'll see what I can do. I love FF13 too much to not try.

5\. Sora might or might not have gotten a small proclivity towards puns from Riku. I'm going to be sure to have him make *tons* of puns when he's in a better emotional state! Seriously, in the japanese CoM he makes a ridiculous number of puns (and I think he makes some puns in DDD as well, I gotta check again), it's canon!


	8. Chapter 7: Make Way for Eventide

**KAIRI**

" _What can I do to help?"_

 _Behind him, unseen by Riku, Maleficent shifted. There was no smile on her face. In fact, if one weren't looking closely, you'd consider her expression to be quite somber. But Kairi saw a pleased glint in her eye that was more terrifying than any smile she could make._

 _Because a look like that meant nothing good for her or her friends._

" _All you can do for now is continue your work," Maleficent answered, "Recover the princesses and spread Darkness and its word wherever you go. In the meanwhile, I will do everything I can to try and fix the girl's condition."_

 _At this, Riku absently watched the swirl of dust motes in the light of the window._

" _Since she wasn't turned into a heartless, do you think this," He gestured futilely, "Whatever this state is, could it have been caused by too much Light?"_

" _Well," She moved over to sit down beside him on the bed. "As I've said, I do not know for sure. But one wouldn't be wrong to say that."_

" _Too much Light," He murmured to himself. Riku had a vaguely resentful look on his face._

" _As you know, I've been surveying your training. You've been doing well, dear boy. Well enough that I think you may be ready for another assignment tomorrow."_

 _Riku's head shot up at this. His resentful look dissolved instantly into something…eager?_

" _Please," He pleaded, "Tell me what to do."_

She blinked away from the memory.

Without realizing it, Kairi had backed herself up against the wall of that familiar chamber while she was distracted with her thoughts. The cool stone was a comforting presence at her back. Beneath her fingertips, the imprints of chains gave a glowing pulse. She slid down to the floor and hid her face in her hands.

She knew Riku always had a problem with his Darkness. It'd been obvious since the day she met him. But this…Kairi never expected this. Kidnapping people? Tainting the Hearts of worlds? It was on an entirely new level.

But, a part of her thought, it certainly helped explain quite a few things. Like what Sora had heard of those girls going missing. The heartless appearing everywhere. Maleficent may have been all-powerful, or the closest thing to it, but she couldn't have achieved such results alone.

Yet Kairi never expected one of her best friends to be part of such things. To even be capable of it.

"Riku," Kairi said into her palms, "What are you _doing?_ "

It was a rhetorical question, of course. She knew exactly what he was doing. Or, more accurately, what he was going to do.

And Kairi knew she had to try and stop it.

* * *

 **SORA**

It was a very nice dream, really.

Her and Riku and Kairi were all back on the islands again, and it was like any other day. The sun was beaming, its pleasant warmth just on the edge of too hot, and the sea was a lukewarm temperature that gave a pleasant respite from the feeling of the sunlight beginning to burn your skin.

 _(wake up)_

Her mom was there, chatting with Kairi's parents about, well, something. Whatever adults talked about. Mortgages? Subprime lending? Other big words? Sora wasn't sure. But whatever they were talking about, they were having a blast too.

 _(Wake up)_

They were all together again. No heartless, no fighting. Or at least no fighting where you had to win or else. Fighting more in the sense of where losing wasn't so bad. And especially fighting against Riku, where every strike elicited a smile and not fear, and a bolster of competitivity. No bright yellow eyes, or gnarled claws, or a glowing Heart flying out at the end towards the deep blue sky. Just their wooden swords. Well, those, _and_ that little thing Riku's bicep did when he twisted his sword arm just so. How that little muscle on the side danced in and out of sight—

 _(WAKE UP)_

Sora opened her eyes. There was nothing to see at first as her eyes adjusted. Just the flat blackness that slowly became more detailed as her pupils shifted to see by the dim light of the stars outside the window _._ Her Heart lurched fearfully as Sora realized there was a humanoid silhouette on her bed at her feet. She scraped at the light switch beside her.

The lights in Sora's room flickered on, and she wrenched her eyes shut tightly against the glare. She peered through her still-squinted eyes until they finally managed to adjust.

It was Kairi.

Sora deflated. She slid a hand down her face.

"Not _again,_ " Sora groaned, "Why'd I interrupt a good dream for another hallucination?"

"Sorry, I didn't realize I disturbed your precious slumber, you bum," Kairi replied dryly. "Look, I've got something important to tell you. I don't have much time, I'm running on fumes as it is."

"What?"

"Go to Agrabah," She insisted, "Stop Riku and Maleficent. Save Jasmine."

Well, that certainly woke Sora up.

"Stop…Riku? And Maleficent? What's he doing with her? And who's Jasmine?"

Kairi—or, Sora thought, her hallucination of Kairi—shook her head as her eyes turned down.

"I don't have time to explain. I can't keep whatever this is stable long enough for that. Just, please," She pleaded, and Sora felt a pang of empathy. "Go to Agrabah. Stop them. Save her."

"I-I will," Sora said, slightly too fast, and tried again. "I will."

She could see Kairi give a long exhale in relief.

"Thank you," was all she said, as she disappeared from view. And with that, Sora was alone in her room again. Without bothering to get as ready as she normally did, since the hour on the clock was ungodly late and she'd have to try getting some sleep to prepare for whatever happened tomorrow, Sora stumbled out into the hallway towards the cockpit.

At this hour everyone was still asleep, and the cockpit was empty. That is, except for one chair where two webbed feet poked out from the side. She drew closer.

In the captain's chair, Donald gave a scratchy snore. His hat was pulled down low over his eyes. Sometime before turning in Goofy had pulled a blanket over Donald before going to bed himself, as the vivid yellow blanket certainly wasn't there when Sora left for the night.

"Hey, Donald?"

He kept snoring. The control panel gave a quiet whirr as the autopilot navigated aimlessly through space.

"Donald?" She tried again.

And again, no response. Sora sighed.

" _Donald._ "

Finally, he stirred. Donald lazily blinked one eye open at her and gave a small start at seeing the blanket draped over him before quickly throwing it off and straightening his hat.

"I, uh," Donald started, "I wasn't sleeping."

"Sure."

"I wasn't!" He insisted with a fervent shake of his head. His hat slid around with the movement. "What do you want, anyway? Come to try and sneak on the controls again?"

Her amusement at Donald's state quickly faded as she remembered Kairi's words. Sora bit her lip.

"Do you know a place called Agrabah?"

"Not personally," He replied, "Though with all the worlds out there there's probably some place called that. Why do you ask?"

She shifted uncomfortably. If she told him that she saw Kairi again and wanted to heed her warning, he might not believe her and decide not to go. Then again, Sora wasn't sure if she even believed herself at this point. She was following the words of a phantom.

"I just really feel like we need to go there," Sora said. It wasn't lying if she just didn't tell him the whole truth, right?

Donald narrowed his eyes at her. "You just 'feel like we need to go'?"

"Yes."

"Nothing else?"

"Nope."

He kept his mild glare fixed on her for a second more before yielding. "Fine. I'll type it in and see if any matches come up," Donald turned to the screen and muttered, "That new gummi's gotta be useful for something, anyways."

A few taps on the screen later and one result popped up. Thankfully, it looked to be reasonably close by.

"Huh. I guess you were right," Donald blinked as he selected for the autopilot to begin the course. _Highwind_ swerved a little bit as it changed direction with a pleasant chime. "I'll make sure the autopilot doesn't go wonky. You might as well go back to bed for a while, projected arrival's not 'till morning."

"Oh yeah?" Sora joked, "Like you?"

"I told you," Donald pouted. It was an odd look considering his mouth was a bill. "I wasn't sleeping."

"Right," Sora shuffled back towards the hallway to her room. "Good night, Donald."

"Good night."

When she fell asleep once again, Sora did not dream of being back on the islands. She did not dream of her mother. This time, there was only her, Riku, and Kairi. And they were falling.

This was not the same as that fateful dream where she fell through the sky and ended up on a stage of stained glass with a keyblade in her hand. Here, the keyblade was gone. And Sora and her friends plunged through a chasm where no light was to be found. She tried to reach.

It was hard to explain. Sora couldn't see them, not with all this Darkness. But she knew they were there, and she knew they were trying to reach back. Trying to find some small sense of stability in the middle of a void.

She tried to reach towards Riku, but she got further from Kairi. She reached for Kairi but risked leaving Riku behind. But it didn't matter.

Sora, try as she might, couldn't reach either one before the dream ended. And so she lost them both.

* * *

 **RIKU**

The dawn that day on Agrabah had been red.

An old adage from the islands came to mind immediately when he saw it as he stepped out of the Dark portal with Maleficent. _'Red sky at morning, sailor's warning.'_ Of course, not that there were any sailors around in a place like this, where the sand stretched on beyond sight without the promise of an ocean behind it.

Riku was used to sand. He just wasn't used to a landscape with nothing _but_ sand, and how desolate it could feel. Not for the first time that day, Riku wondered what could have possessed this city's founders to plop down the first few buildings in the middle of the desert.

At least the final product was admirable, in the sense that the land's people managed to make a home out of such an uninhabitable place. Rows and rows of structures in that same sandy tone, uniform in their simple geometric construction. Between the streets stretched great canals of water from some unknown source that stretched towards the center of the city, where the palace of Agrabah stood tall.

Agrabah was a beautiful place, if desolate, he decided. Or it would be beautiful if its quietude weren't interrupted by the screams of its people around them just outside the palace doors. Where Agrabah's citizens had wandered in the early hours of the morning that day, preparing their wares for markets and going on errands, they now were running from heartless.

Riku gave a small cringe at the sound.

"Don't you think this is a little much?" Riku asked. Jafar gave no indication he had heard the boy as he watched the proceedings going on in the room just beyond the archway behind them, where the stragglers of the former Sultan's courtiers were running from the heartless, but Maleficent walked over and looked outside the windows just as Riku did. "All we need is the Heart and the princess, right?"

He saw several guards outside try to put up a fight against the Dark creatures that was quickly lost. And with a black flare that consumed their bodies, more heartless were added to the numbers that were busy terrorizing Agrabah's people. Riku spied a young man and woman running hand in hand not far from the palace doors, the woman's jeweled headband peeking out at intervals under her shawl in clear contrast to the man's shabby attire. Several heartless chased after them.

"Change can often go hand in hand with hysteria, my boy," Maleficent said, and pursed her painted lips. "Even those that beg for change the most may not always like the face it comes to them in. But you may have a point."

At this, she turned to Jafar, who was still leering at the sight of several palace guards putting up a struggle against some particularly strong heartless. Riku watched as one guard crumpled to the floor and stared slack-jawed as his companions' limbs turned black and gnarled, their transformations complete as their newly yellow eyes blinked open and they turned on their remaining former companion. He frowned: Maleficent had never told him the heartless could convert people into their own by force. Riku thought people could only become heartless by falling to the Darkness on their own. _She probably forgot,_ he figured. Still, it was unnerving to see.

"Don't get greedy, Jafar," Maleficent reminded, "All you said you needed to dispose of were the ones who would be in our way. Wouldn't that only include the Sultan and his most ardent supporters in court?"

Jafar finally tore his eyes away from the proceedings to fix the two of them with a sneer. "I must make them forget my days of humiliation as Royal Vizier and remind them of my newfound power as their Sultan. For a task such as this, fear is a strong scepter to rule with."

"And a double-edged sword." Maleficent added as her eyes flickered back to the remaining civilians in the streets. She reached into her robes to fish out a single sheet of paper and strode over to hand it to Jafar. "Don't steep yourself in Darkness too long. The heartless consume the careless."

He yanked the sheet out of her hands and read it quickly, with his beady black eyes quickly narrowing into a scowling grimace.

"And what, precisely, am I supposed to do with this?" Jafar demanded with the page wrinkling in his grip. Behind him, the last remaining guard was quivering in fear as he watched his own transformation into a heartless. "I've read this report a hundred times, you espouse its creed at me every time we see each other."

"I think it may come in useful as a reminder."

Her reply did nothing to satiate his question, but his angry retort was stifled at the sight of a parrot circling back through the sky towards the tower. The colorful bird alighted clumsily on Jafar's shoulder, his claws scrambling to find purchase in the silky material of his robes.

If Diablo were here, Riku thought to himself, Maleficent and Jafar would have looked strikingly like alternate versions of each other—Jafar with his staff and the bird Iago, and Maleficent with her own staff and Diablo glaring at them all from his spot on her shoulder. But even as is they looked quite similar regardless, with their flowing robes and a Darkness so strong it came close to marking their paths.

Iago spoke, "Jafar! I've looked everywhere for Jasmine. She's disappeared like magic!"

"Hm. The girl's more trouble than she's worth," Jafar looked to Maleficent as he asked, "Are you sure we need her?"

"Yes, and you know quite well why we need her. You said you had things under control."

"Oh, I certainly know why _you_ need the princess of Heart, but I don't know how it could benef—" His words looked to have died somewhere deep in his throat as his eyes flickered to Riku for a moment. At this, Riku glanced back and forth between Jafar and Maleficent, and saw that the latter was leveling him with a murderous look. She soon noticed Riku looking to her and smoothed her face into a carefully neutral expression.

Jafar nervously cleared his throat. "Anyway, your concern is…touching. But hardly necessary. We have the heartless on the case and even an extra set of hands with us today. I'm sure she will be found quite soon," He finished with a gesture towards Riku, before tightening his hand on his staff enough that his knuckles went white.

"Be sure of that, or else." Maleficent threatened, and turned to walk out into the now-nearly deserted market square and towards the thoroughfare, both Riku and Jafar wordlessly dismissed to do their tasks.

Riku looked down and gnawed at the inside of his cheek. He didn't know how he felt about her leaving yet.

"Hey, Maleficent?" He asked after her, shuffling over quickly to make up for the lost distance before she could leave. Riku tripped over his own words when she turned back to him with a brow raised. "Are, um, are you sure you won't be here for this one? What if something happens?"

Riku couldn't keep out the small note of longing in his voice. And this time, he didn't scorn himself for it. Maleficent's expression softened.

"My dear, I'll always be close at hand if you need me. Just because I am out of sight does not mean I am out of reach." She replied, and he remembered the Dark portals.

"Yeah," He nodded. And this time, a little steadier in his tone, he repeated, "Yeah, okay. See you later, Maleficent."

She matched his wave, and replied fondly, "You too, my child. Be well."

At this, Riku turned to leave. He could see Jafar already readying for their work, and currently busy ordering around numbers of heartless on where to begin searching for the princess. Despite himself, Riku glanced back to see Maleficent one last time. But she was already gone, nowhere to be seen in either the market square or down the street as he looked out the window.

Jafar gave him a reproachful glance as he went towards the palace doors. "She coddles you, you know."

"What do you mean?"

He snorted.

"I'm not going to explain the obvious to an imbecile. Now come, boy. We've got plenty of work to do today."

* * *

 **SORA**

That morning, the small crew assembled at the cockpit of the gummi ship and stared at the approaching world of Agrabah.

On one end capped the curved domes of what looked like a palace, albeit one in an architecture Sora had never seen before, in a color palette of tan and gold with red bands finishing the design. The other end yawned open with the maw of a cave that was made to look quite like a jungle cat. And in between, no-man's-land.

"That's a lot of sand," Sora remarked aptly. Donald scoffed at her astute observation and reached over to flick several switches, and _Highwind_ began its descent.

"Of course there's sand, dummy, it's a desert."

"So how did ya guys choose this world again?" Goofy asked.

"Ask Sora," Donald replied, "It was her idea. Buckle in."

They complied, and Sora used her distraction with fastening her seatbelt to delay having to give a response. She looked up to see them both looking to her for an explanation.

"What?" Sora flicked her eyes back and forth between Donald and Goofy, and said "I already told Donald last night! I just felt like we needed to be here, is that so crazy?"

"Yes." Donald deadpanned, and she rolled her eyes.

Goofy gave a thoughtful hum. "Gawrsh, it must have something to do with the keyblade! King Mickey did tell us to stick by the key for a reason, Donald."

"That's true," He conceded, and pivoted the controls to lead the gummi ship's descent. Sora could see he was aiming to land on the outskirts of town, just out of sight from the locals but not far from civilization.

"Now that I think about it, you guys never really did say why he needed you to stick with me in the first place," Sora wondered aloud.

Goofy shrugged. "He never gave one in particular, in his letter he only said the keyblade was the key to our survival and to stick by whoever had it," He answered, his expression falling slightly as he saw Sora beginning to wilt at his words, and hurriedly added, "But I'm sure glad he did! Aside from the whole heartless thing and saving the worlds, you've turned out to be a great pal."

Sora cracked a smile as he ruffled her hair, and said "Thanks, Goofy. I'm just thinking, it's weird that he sent you to do all of this in the first place without giving a good reason."

"That's just how King Mickey is," Donald said as he flicked several more switches, and the sky outside got lighter as they descended to the ground. "When something big's going on he's always the first on the case, but he can forget to explain a lot on the way since he's so busy. But he's always got a good reason in the end for what he does."

Sora could feel the heat from Agrabah even through the windows and the gummi ship's climate control system that regulated the ship's temperature. There was a whirring noise from the fans as an icy breeze brushed along her arms.

"Hope we're not here too long, or Jiminy'll be having trouble later with the ship," Donald muttered as he turned off the main engine, _Highwind_ now stationed safely out of sight behind a sand dune not far from the city's walls. The fans kept blowing onto the trio as they made their way to exit the ship, making for a rude awakening the moment Goofy entered the hatch as the heat from outside made its way in.

"Remember," Donald elbowed Sora in the side, "This was _your_ idea."

"I'm sticking by it!" She insisted as they climbed down to the sand below, with Goofy being the last to join them with his work on closing the hatch again. He clumsily slid down the hull to join them to the noise of Donald muttering about fresh scrapes in the paint.

A few paces away from them both, Sora stared at the city walls with her keyblade flashing into existence in her hand.

 _Go to Agrabah,_ Kairi instructed. _Stop Riku and Maleficent. Save Jasmine._

Sora tightened her grip on her keyblade.

"Let's make our way to the city," She told her friends. Sora was too engrossed in her thoughts to hear whatever response they may have had, but she could hear them shuffling along behind her on the sand as she walked quickly.

'Save Jasmine'. Sora sighed. She had no idea where to begin. Hopefully in the city they'd come across someone who knew who she was, and where she could be. But that still left the matter of Kairi's next words.

Stop Riku and Maleficent.

Was Riku working with her? Had he lost his mind? If Sora's theory was right, and Maleficent really was the one orchestrating this whole mess with the heartless across the worlds, and making everything fall to the Darkness…did Riku know about it? Was he _helping_ her?

Sora shivered at the thought of Riku surrounded by those Dark creatures with golden eyes. At the thought of him going from world to world spreading Darkness. He had seemed normal enough back in Traverse Town when she last saw him. He looked great, even, and acting like his old self again before the end of that conversation. When he'd left all of a sudden without any warning or saying goodbye. And when Riku managed to summon her keyblade to his hand.

How did he do that?

Maybe Sora could ask him when they caught up with him and figured out what was going on, she figured. That was it. Maybe this all had to be a giant mistake, or a misunderstanding, and later on they'd be able to laugh about it after they find their way home. Riku could be a bit sullen sometimes, even brusque, but he was never really a jerk and he certainly wasn't evil. This whole thing with Maleficent was just, well, Sora wasn't sure what it was, but she was sure it wasn't the whole story.

"Guys?" Goofy called out from behind her. She turned around to see his leg trapped halfway in the sand. "Something's messing with my leg." He tried wiggling his knee for emphasis, and only succeeded in getting sucked into the ground even more.

"Quicksand!" Donald squawked, and took a halted step towards him, as if he had to remind himself not to get too close in his efforts to help. And instead, he held out a feathered hand to gesture for Goofy to stop, calling out, "Don't move!"

And then, as if his words were a beacon, Dark flashes sprung up all around the group. Sora steeled her grip on her keyblade, and Donald's staff began crackling at the edges. Portals formed from the Darkness, and out crawled a number of heartless.

"Oh, great," Sora muttered. Fighting heartless above and around while trying to avoid stepping in the quicksand down below.

Gee, she thought, this'll be fun.

* * *

 **RIKU**

Not long after Maleficent left, Jafar had told him to go wander the streets to look for Jasmine himself.

And so Riku did, choosing to deftly ignore the vizier's mutterings about how babysitting was beneath his station. At least Riku's task would be easier than usual, he supposed optimistically, since the streets were now quite empty. No people to get in the way of finding Jasmine.

The less-than-optimistic perspective, though, was that the streets were quite empty. And therefore, no Jasmine.

He decided to just wander for a while, his gaze searching but not really searching, too distracted with thinking back on Jafar's words from earlier.

" _She coddles you, you know."_

It certainly didn't feel as though Maleficent coddled him. Riku still had tasks to do just as Maleficent's cohorts did. And judging by today, where Jafar's assigned tasks were just the same as Riku's, there didn't look to be lighter work or anything different at all in his treatment. Only the added-in task of throwing a coup, to help Jafar take the former Sultan's place as the ruler of Agrabah. Riku still wasn't entirely sure of the use of that, as it was in Jafar's terms of agreement for working with Maleficent in the first place, rather than for any good intentions, but they did it anyways. And now, he thought as he angled out of the way of some heartless running by, here he was. Stuck in a hot sandy place wandering around. Just like being back on the islands again. He sighed.

Riku couldn't stifle the weight of guilt in his Heart as he looked around the empty streets. The abandoned market stalls of the main square, wares sitting abandoned in their baskets, food beginning to burn as it was left on the outdoor skillets with nobody to attend to it. The hiss of the wind with no familiar bustle of people to punctuate its sound. The ones that were smart had already gotten away by now, cooped up behind the closed shutters of identical sandstone buildings.

And the not so smart ones?

Well.

Riku didn't want to think about that.

Before he could think on the matter any more, Riku could hear a distant scream from one of the many alleyways that made Agrabah a maze. Another gotten by the heartless, no doubt. He clenched his fists. Riku wasn't supposed to interfere with the heartless' work, Maleficent had told him so. Leave people to their Darkness, she had said. Let them find their path just as Riku did.

But this didn't sit right with him. He paced around in small circles for a few seconds, his feet feeling as restless as his Heart. The scream had come from that direction, he thought to himself, he'd just walked there not five minutes ago. If he went now…

"Ugh," Riku let his arms drop to his sides. "Fine. Fine!"

He ran as fast as he could through the barely familiar streets, small strings of flags strung over the roads fluttering in his wake like confetti. The sand pulled at his feet, slowing his speed, and he could feel where the hot winds pelted it into his skin, biting him and turning his flesh into a pink color. Riku dismissed Soul Eater to furiously rub at his eyes as he ran, feeling small grains crawl into the edges.

He heard another scream. Riku was getting closer judging by the sound of it.

Around the corner, turn left at the fruit stall, dodge the half-broken urns sitting out…there!

A number of heartless were gathered around at the end of the alleyway Riku had found himself in, with several more actively reaching towards something hidden from view. Or someone.

"Hey!" Riku shouted. He lost his voice a little when the heartless turned towards him, curious and hungry. Riku knew he didn't have anything to fear from the heartless, that they recognized him as a friend. But that never stopped how much they unnerved him, and Riku got the sense that they _knew_. That somewhere, deep down, the heartless knew precisely how afraid he was of them. That they knew his fear, his anger, his sadness in the same way a shark could smell a single drop of blood in an ocean. And the only thing holding them back was Maleficent's leash.

He grit his teeth. "Let them go."

The heartless only stared at him in response, turning away from their target to size him up instead. Their eyes were as gold as the sand in the shade of the alleyway.

"I said," Riku summoned Soul Eater back to his hand with a Dark swirl, "Let them go."

They paused for a second more, and just as Riku thought he might have to fight, the heartless begrudgingly moved away. As they shuffled back down the alleyway and disappeared around the corner, presumably off to go search for the keyhole to Agrabah, Riku turned to see who it was they cornered.

A woman, really more of a girl, and not much older than him if he had to estimate. Riku could see where her shawl had slipped away slightly to reveal a headband adorned with a sapphire. Huddled close to her were two small children.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes," She replied, her words caught slightly as she blinked away her shock at the heartless' appearance. The children nodded hesitantly before drawing behind her more, and she looked down at them. "I saw them still stuck outside after those—those _things_ started going after people. I couldn't let them try and get away on their own, they wouldn't survive."

Riku looked to them, and then towards the entrance to the alleyway. The streets just beyond looked to be clear for now. "Where do you live?" He asked the children, "I could accompany you back."

"N-not far from here, sir, just a couple of blocks over," The small boy stammered, and his sister nodded hurriedly from the girl's other side. "Just that way," He pointed.

"Come on, then." Riku waved for them to follow him, and they did. The coast was still clear as they exited the alleyway, and Riku could feel the bite of the sun on his shoulders as they walked down the street.

The four of them walked in silence for a little while, with the only interruption being the children giving quick instructions here and there as for where to turn. Riku could feel their eyes on him, curious.

Several minutes later the group came up on a small entryway with a bright green bolt of cloth draped over it to block out the sun, and Riku could see the door to it open up just slightly. A terrified face peered out from behind the door and turned relieved at the sight of the group. They poked a hand out to hastily beckon the children inside.

"I-it's right here, sir," The young girl said, and grabbed on her brother's sleeve. Her eyes didn't meet Riku's for long before darting down and then back up again. "Thank you," She said shyly.

The children kept a close grip on each other as they ran to their parents' door, and Riku could see the face hidden behind it come into view as they gave him a thankful smile for a moment before quickly closing it again. And with that, Riku and the girl were alone on the streets. He couldn't help but feel as if there were eyes on him. Perhaps the people in the buildings were still watching the streets and seeing him, Riku reasoned to himself.

"Thank you," The girl spoke from behind him, and he turned to see her readjusting her shawl to cover her headband. "That was a nice thing you did, helping them. And me," She added as an afterthought.

"It was nothing, really," Riku brushed off, "Do you have somewhere to go? The streets aren't exactly safe right now."

She gave a bitter laugh. "Nowhere is exactly safe for me right now," The girl said with a glance to the distant golden rooftops of the castle. Riku furrowed his brows.

"What do you mean?"

The girl gave a noncommittal noise. She glanced at Soul Eater. "How were you able to just call those things off? I sa—um, heard that those things tossed aside the palace guards like they were nothing earlier."

"Oh. That." Riku wracked his brain for any answer that could work. Obviously, the truth was out of the question. "It's, uh, it's just like dealing with a dog is all."

Not too far from the truth, at least. He didn't have any direct control over the heartless but ordering them around at times could be exactly like managing a misbehaved dog. Sometimes they listened to him, sometimes they didn't. Things usually seemed to go over better with them back on Hollow Bastion than off-world, he noticed.

"A dog?"

"Sure. They can sense if you're afraid, so you just have to," Riku waved noncommittally, "Take a stand with them."

She gave him a skeptical glance, and then laughed. "That sounds like what I have to do with Rajah sometimes. He's always sweet to me but when it comes to anybody else, he can be so stubborn. But he always listens when I tell him to back down."

"Sounds like he makes a good guard dog."

"Close. More like a good guard _tiger._ "

At this, Riku snapped up. He remembered Jafar's words from not long after they arrived.

' _Be careful,'_ He had said, _'The princess has a despicable pet tiger that's at her beck and call.'_

Riku's eyes widened. "So where is he? Your tiger?" He tried in the most relaxed voice he could muster.

The girl—Jasmine? — sighed. "I don't know. He was one of the first ones those creatures got away with."

He wasn't sure where to navigate this conversation next. If she was Jasmine, he'd have to find a way to get her to confess her identity to know for sure. Riku couldn't afford any mistakes with that before making any efforts to complete his assignment. That, and he didn't want to turn the mood sour, which he suspected that any more mentions of this girl's pet tiger would achieve. But either way, Riku had to keep her talking. Maybe he'd find out something useful.

"You mentioned that nowhere was safe for you right now," He began, "But do you think there's somewhere I could escort you to? Until this all, uh, blows over."

It wasn't going to blow over for the foreseeable future, of course, but it wasn't like she had to know that. Yet.

"Well, I have a friend," She hesitated, and then shook her head. "Yes, a friend, who took me to his hideout before he left when my home was overrun by those things. He's the one who's helped me get away plenty of times, actually. His place is just some streets over." She finished, gesturing to one side of the intersection they had found themselves walking towards.

"Sounds good. Lead the way." Riku nodded. "He's helped you get away 'plenty of times'? From what?"

"Everything," She said as her face fell. Riku could see her entire posture droop with stress. "Life at my place can be hectic, to say the least. I have to walk a certain way, talk, dress, do everything a certain way. I'm not even allowed out of the palace, I have to _sneak_ out. Before all this happened, I was being forced to choose from a list of suitors as to who I'd get married to! It's ridiculous; I have to choose who to spend the rest of my life with, like I'm choosing which fruit looks the best from a market stall. Except every last fruit is rotten to the core! I can't even get the freedom to love who I wish!" She ended her outburst with her hands in fists.

"Are you sure you haven't tried letting people know your feelings about these things? Or maybe you have someone who could look out for you?" Riku offered. She scoffed.

"Of course I let them know. I let them know every day. I shouldn't need anyone to look out for me, I'm the princess, for Allah's sake!"

Well then. A princess who owned a tiger. Either Jasmine had a sister Jafar neglected to mention, or this was who he was looking for.

She went on, seemingly unaware of her gaffe. She clearly had quite a bit of pent-up frustration from this. "I guess you could say my father looks out for me. I know he loves me and only wants the best for me, but he can be just as bad as the rest! 'Jasmine, have you chosen a suitor yet?' 'Jasmine, the law says you must be married to a prince by your next birthday!' Jasmine, Jasmine, _Jasmine!_ " Her breath came out harshly through her gritted teeth.

Yep, that confirmed it.

The silence of the city streets had become slightly awkward by this point. Riku's thoughts whirled with what he'd learned, what he'd seen.

And how he could use this to complete his tasks.

Riku worked his jaw for a moment as he contemplated his next words carefully. He could see Jasmine's demeanor start to sink as the anger slowly bled out.

"What if I told you there was a way to get out of it?"

"What do you mean?" Jasmine asked.

"If there was a place you could go to, to escape royal life," She looked abashed for a moment at his words as she realized what she'd confessed in her momentary rage. "Where you didn't have to worry about marrying anyone you didn't have to, or walking or talking a certain way or doing anything you didn't want to do, would you go?"

"In a heartbeat."

He looked around again. The square was still empty, devoid of even heartless in the distance. So why did he keep feeling like someone was watching him?

"Well, there's something you should know about me." Riku announced, "I don't come from Agrabah."

He had expected shock, or surprise, anything other than amusement. But Jasmine laughed.

"Obviously," She teased, "You don't look anything like the people from around here, and you don't dress like us either. Are you from one of the neighboring city-states? Another kingdom?"

"Something like that," Riku chuckled. "I come from another world."

"Another world?" She replied. He nodded.

"I would be happy to show you," Riku said, "Actually, I could take you there in an instant, even."

"In an instant?" Jasmine asked disbelievingly.

"Yep."

She began to pace around, a cautiously excited look dawning in her face. "No courtiers to deal with, no emissaries, no politics…"

"…No having to marry anyone you didn't want to, no more being constricted to the palace, no rules." He finished.

"Could you show me?"

"I'd be happy to," he said, "But you see, there's one little catch."

* * *

 **SORA**

Donald's advice of 'Don't move' was quite quickly forgotten.

As one heartless lunged Sora quickly squatted low to the ground and rolled to get out of the way, bringing her keyblade up in a sharp thrust to jab the heartless in the side as it fell over where she was. It got its blackened hand sucked into the quicksand but pulled it back easily enough before starting to try attacking Donald next.

That gave Sora an idea: The quicksand was a hazard, but maybe it could be useful.

Another grabbed onto her back and she viciously tried to shake it off, loosening it enough to where Sora could yank it away by its shoulder and heave the heartless over its fellows, over Donald's and Goofy's heads, and straight on its back in the middle of the quicksand. She allowed herself an impressed smile at her work as the heartless thrashed desperately against the trap, causing the creature to only be ensnared further for its efforts.

Donald, she could see, was trying to take an alternate route: He threw frost spells left and right, muttering an unintelligible string of incantations—or maybe they were curses, Sora was only able to understand him a good three-fourths of the time at this point—in his work, aiming at both the quicksand and the heartless around him. Several heartless spluttered to nothing as they were caught by the magic, quick Dark bursts giving away to glowing Hearts that glided upward and out of sight. The quicksand, as the frost spells hit parts of the patch, solidified enough that Goofy was able to awkwardly grab onto the edge of one frozen solid chunk of quicksand and pull himself out, giving thanks to Donald as he did so before quickly joining the fray.

Freezing the quicksand helped reduce the hazard as well, though Sora was careful not to risk going out too far: Trying to step more than a foot into the puddle on the ice was successful but yielded an uneasy crack. She could see the frozen surface beginning glisten in the hot late morning sun as the ice started to thaw near instantly.

Another heartless lunged, and she batted it away with a swipe of her keyblade, its path now marked by Darkness seeping out of its side. It lunged again, gaining a hold on the tip of her keyblade, and lifted off the ground as Sora desperately tried waving her weapon back and forth to force it off. When that yielded no results, and the heartless tried getting a grip on the shaft of the keyblade to try and climb towards her hand, Sora used the keyblade and the heartless attached to it as a blunt weapon as she spun around in circles with the heartless now unwittingly clobbering its fellow heartless as it was thrown about.

But finally it had taken a few too many smacks in the sides, and it dispersed with a sickly wheezing noise, Dark gusts yielding one more Heart to join the rest. She heard Goofy shout from somewhere to her side.

Sora turned to see him barely holding off one particularly large heartless with his shield. He yelled, "You guys, I think they're callin' in friends!"

He was right. All around the trio, Dark portals opened along the ground, with more heartless stepping out to replace their felled companions and then some. They immediately joined the fray, making the already questionable situation dire.

Sora wrenched her eyes shut as sand blew into her face from the breeze, blinding her momentarily. She staggered, holding her keyblade sideways in front of her to guard against her opponent's reaching claws. And in turn, the heartless' companions burst forth to rush at her from the side.

In one motion, she desperately kicked at the heartless in front of her and struck everything in an arc around her, hearing Donald give an angry quack from somewhere diagonal towards her left. "Sorry!"

"Watch it next time!" He fired back, throwing out bolt after bolt of lightning from his staff, making jagged pieces of sand-colored glass form on the ground as they struck the earth. Several heartless were disintegrated, likely they were remnants from earlier in the fight, whereas others began to seep Darkness but were otherwise still okay. Donald threw a fireball, making the battlefield blistering hot from where it was already overly warm from the Agrabah sun bearing down.

Sora frustratedly rubbed at her eyes against the sand, and only succeeded in rubbing it in even worse. She blinked past the grains to see Donald and Goofy were struggling with the reinforcements. Donald was knee-deep in the now-melted quicksand, she saw, and struggling to get out. He fell forward and gave a panicked cry as he realized his arms were stuck now, too. Donald uselessly tried pumping his legs in attempt to swim.

Goofy and Sora both reached for him. And at the last second before Goofy could reach Donald, a heartless clamored against his shield, knocking him off-balance and sending him into the quicksand. He tried to keep his shield arm above the puddle to keep it from getting sucked in. More heartless tried to jump into the quicksand, either mindlessly trying to keep attacking or to ensnare them even more at the cost of their own lives, the rippling of the surface of the quicksand sucking in her friends just that much more.

Sora realized she was alone against the heartless. She fired off spells left and right, frost and fire and lightning spiraling across the dunes, Hearts freed from their Dark prisons and gliding far from the fight with every heartless defeated. But it wasn't enough. More came to join the fray, Dark portals opening all around them to pour forth more heartless. She lifted her leg to turn towards another heartless.

And quickly realized she couldn't. Sora tried again, uselessly, her shoe nearly getting sucked off her foot as she did so. Sora could see the Fairy Godmother's enchantment at work, banishing large patches of the quicksand from her sock and shoe, but it wasn't enough. Where the quicksand vanished, more took its place. And there was who knows how much larger of a lake of it to suck her in.

Two heartless came at her from either side. She brought up her keyblade to block, and still felt the shock from their strikes even if they didn't land directly on her. Sora wobbled on her feet from the blow for one terrifying second, as she suddenly focused on the sight of the quicksand puddle and her friends trapped in it, before realizing the quicksand was getting closer. And then, she fell right into it.

Her head was above the puddle, so she wasn't suffocating yet, but she saw Donald behind her desperately trying to keep his bill above the quicksand. Goofy was thrashing against it, still trying to keep his shield hand above himself, but every time he thrashed he only got sucked in more.

This was it, Sora realized. They were going to suffocate in quicksand on a foreign world, who knows how many miles from home. With Sora never having found Kairi, or her mother. Everyone in Traverse Town would still think she's going among the stars trying to save everything, not knowing the truth…

A distant shout from beyond the dunes prompted Sora to quickly look around. And from behind them, she could see a silhouette fly out from behind a dune that was nearly impossible to see around the sun's rays.

They flew a wide circle around the trio and the gathered heartless, and Sora could see it was a boy, almost old enough to be considered a man. With a vest and patched billowing pants, and a small monkey tightly gripping onto his knee. He was holding onto the edge of a highly animated rug that looked to be how he was able to fly, darting through the air.

"Hey!" He yelled down at them, "Need some help?"

"Gawrsh, yes!" Goofy shouted desperately, "Yes please!"

The boy darted in and out on his rug, as if he were trying to find an opening. But the heartless were still too numerous, and they flicked their antennae at him menacingly every time he came close. The boy screwed his face in thought before finally shaking his head and reaching into his pocket as he landed.

Sora couldn't see the object he was holding from her spot in the quicksand, but it was shiny enough to reflect the sun and make her squint. The boy held it aloft before wiping his palm on the surface of it. It began to rattle in his hand.

"Come on out, Genie!" He yelled. A bright blue cloud burst out from it, distracting the heartless as it grew large enough to block out the sun. Sora could see bright sparkles of magic within the cloud.

And then it took shape. A stylized humanoid silhouette was the result, larger than life and bursting with energy. Sora saw that it was a cartoonish looking man with skin as blue as the cloud was, with a grin that nearly split his face with excitement. He had no legs, with his torso instead ending in a tail that tapered towards the lamp.

"Hey, hey, _hey!_ " The Genie called out as he did a lap around the quicksand puddle, shimmying around the heartless before picking one up and doing a quick tango with it and sliding it into a dip. The Genie straightened up to reveal a red rose clutched in his teeth as he twirled the heartless towards its confused companions with one hand, and plucking the rose out of his mouth to present it to Aladdin with the other. "The one, the only, the Genie of the lamp at your service!"

He threw out confetti as he widely opened his arms, and Sora saw gleaming gold cuffs bound on his wrists catch the light. The confetti floated gently to the surface of the quicksand.

"I tell ya, ten thousand years caged up will give you such a crick in the neck!" He said as his grin turned slightly pained and pulled his head off his shoulders with a _pop!_ He rotated it several times before plopping it back down on his shoulders again. "I am so glad to be outta there, nice to be back ladies and gents, lovely to see you, how are you," The Genie said jovially as he raised his cupped hand in a wave not unlike a princess as small flares of light came forth around him to mimic paparazzi camera flashes. "If you were my one-millionth customer I'd offer you a free toaster, but alas, you're my nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth thousand, nine-hundred-and-ninety-eighth instead! Early bird here does _not_ get the worm—or, uh, toaster, heh! —but I'll offer you a dee-e-e-lightful consolation prize instead…three wishes! What'll it be, sir?"

"Help us!" Donald squawked angrily past his mouth full of quicksand. Aladdin tore his eyes away from the Genie to remember their plight.

"Right, hey Genie! Save them from the heartless and quicksand!"

"Ooh, was that one wish or two?" The Genie wondered aloud, doing quick math on his fingers that multiplied far beyond his original five. "Worded as one, but if I have to save them from two things then…Ah, I'll be generous. Here you go, wish number one coming right up!"

With a snap of the Genie's fingers, the trio were lifted out of the quicksand, and Sora saw the last dregs of it disappear from her clothes. The heartless were vanished away in an instant in a spectrum of colorful clouds, revealing an empty sand dune. The quicksand puddle was gone.

The three were gently lowered to their feet, and Donald gave a relieved sigh. He waved his staff and all traces of the quicksand were cleaned from clothes.

"Thanks, you were a lifesaver," Sora said to Aladdin.

"Good thing I happened to pass by, caravans hardly ever pass through this side of the city walls." He replied as the rug lowered him close enough to the ground that he could step off. It started gliding in small circles over the sand around them, bobbing up and down with the small monkey having stayed on it. The Genie conjured what looked like a small rollercoaster track for the rug to follow, and it dipped into a corkscrew twirl with the monkey holding on for dear life. "What're you guys doing out here, anyway?"

"Well, we got off our ship and got caught up in the heart—Mmph!" Goofy's voice was muffled as Donald quickly raised a hand to clamp his jaw shut.

Sora laughed nervously, "Gee, Aladdin, what're you doing out here?!"

"Me?" Aladdin glanced back towards the city walls. "Hunting legendary treasure. I paid a visit to the Cave of Wonders to try finding something useful. That's where I found this lamp!"

At this, Genie ducked in. "And I'm here to grant my master any three wishes! Except for wishing for more wishes, wishing for someone to die or come back to life or fall in love with you. Ya know, the not so easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy stuff." He said, conjuring up a hand-held juicer and squeezing some lemons into a small glass of lemonade that looked enticing in the desert heat. It quickly vanished, much to the trio's disappointment.

"I wonder if he can find the king," Goofy muttered to Donald, who glowered at him.

"We are _not_ interfering with the world order."

"So, master," The Genie batted his eyes at Aladdin, "What'll it be for wish number two?"

"Well," Aladdin looked down at the lamp, absentmindedly turning it around in his hands. "I'd love to wish to be a wealthy prince so I could propose to Jasmine…"

"Jasmine!" Sora exclaimed with a start. She immediately remembered their purpose for coming here in the first place, forgotten in the fight.

"Ooh!" The Genie readied his pointer finger as the tip of it crackled with magic, "Money, royalty, fame! Why didn't I think of that?"

"…But I think I'll put that on hold until we get back to Agrabah," Aladdin said as the Genie sagged with a sound quite like the squeal of a deflating balloon, the magic sputtering uselessly towards the ground as his finger drooped. "There's something going on in the city and I wanted to see if you could help set things right."

 _Go to Agrabah. Stop Riku and Maleficent. Save Jasmine._

"No problemo," The Genie said as he returned to normal form and reclined in midair. "Gives me more time to enjoy the fresh air!"

"What's going on in the city?" Goofy asked. Aladdin looked towards the city walls with a concerned crease of his forehead.

"I'm not sure," He replied, "When I woke up I made my way to the market place as usual to meet up with Jasmine, but not long after I got there these black creatures with glowing yellow eyes showed up and started going after people. It took me a long time to find Jasmine, I thought something terrible had happened."

"Those creatures were heartless!" Sora blurted out, and she shooed away Donald's annoyed look. "Come off it, Donald, he's already encountered them twice now."

"You know what those things are?" Aladdin asked, and at their nod he said, "Hey, maybe you guys can help! Do you mind coming back to Agrabah with me? The magic carpet can get us there quicker than on foot."

"So long as we don't have to encounter quicksand again," Donald replied.

"Sounds good to me," Sora said as the magic carpet sailed through the air back around towards them, the little roller coaster track the Genie had conjured for it dispersing into colorful smoke. They all shuffled on, with Genie choosing to sail through the air beside them instead.

After the third, or fourth, barrel roll the Genie did in the magic carpet's wake Goofy asked him, "Guess you don't get out much, huh?"

The Genie shrugged. "Comes with the job. Phenomenal cosmic powers," He began as he spun around miniature planets in his opened hand, "Itty bitty living space." He finished sadly, closing his hand around the planets and opening it again to reveal nothing. "It's always three wishes, and then back to my portable prison! I'm lucky to see the light of day every century or two."

"I'd probably go crazy if I had to live like that," Sora remarked. Donald nodded.

Aladdin looked to the horizon at this, and then down at the lamp still clutched in his hand. His expression shifted to something contemplative.

"Hey, Genie, what if I used my last wish to free you from the lamp?" He suggested.

The Genie stopped in the middle of his corkscrew turn. He stared at Aladdin with wide eyes.

"You'd do that?" He gasped. Aladdin nodded. "That's so kind of you. Even if you probably don't mean it," He added in a much quieter tone.

"It's a promise, Genie. After we get back and see how to fix whatever's going on in Agrabah." Aladdin replied.

He seemed remarkably laid-back for a potentially tumultuous situation going on in his city, Sora thought to herself. Perhaps things weren't really so bad after all?

"So, um, Aladdin? Do you know where Jasmine is?" Sora asked, "And how were the people in the city when you left?"

"She should be back at my hideout now. I told her it'd be safest there until I came back from the Cave of Wonders with something that could solve the heartless problem. By the time I got out the last of the people on the streets went into hiding, from what I saw."

Sora gave a long exhale at this. At least the 'Save Jasmine' part of what she had to do could be safely checked off.

But that still left stopping Riku and Maleficent.

* * *

 **RIKU**

"Wait, so I have to go with _him?_ With Jafar?" She asked incredulously.

"Only for a little while," Riku amended, "You'll really be going with me and Maleficent, Jafar's going to be staying here."

Jasmine angled her head at him. "Wouldn't that just condemn everyone in Agrabah since he's the sultan now? What about my father? Or Aladdin, or everyone?"

He remembered Maleficent's words from yesterday.

" _He may have cleverness in spades, but he's sorely lacking in sense,"_ She said. _"No one like that ever keeps a crown for long. I already have replacements amongst the worlds if he steps out of line."_

"Maleficent said he wouldn't stay on the throne for long. I'm sure she'll be willing to help recover your father from exile and get his title back."

At this, she narrowed her eyes. "But if this Maleficent's working with Jafar, and you are too, wouldn't that mean the both of you were in on his coup earlier today?"

The question caught him off guard. Riku wasn't sure how to answer in such a way that would still keep her wanting to go along.

"Well," He tried, opening and closing his mouth in attempt to call forth some kind of answer. Riku tasted sand.

A thought occurred to him: What if Riku just tried telling the truth?

"Our goal, mine and Maleficent's…is to do the right thing."

"How is overthrowing my father and unleashing those creatures on the streets the right thing?"

"It's not," He agreed. "That was Jafar. I'll agree, he's not one of the good guys. But sometimes you have to work with the wrong people to do what's right. He agreed to help us achieve balance between Light and Darkness among the worlds and that's why we're working with him now. We'll be more than happy to work with your father instead, if he's willing to help us. Which from what you've told me of him I'm sure he will. He's got a good Heart."

"Balance, yes," Jasmine nodded and put a hand to her chin. "I'm still not sure I understand everything you've told me, but I can agree on balance between the two being important." She started pacing again. "A number of the guards around here aren't the best people either, but that didn't stop my father from employing them. Like Captain Razoul. I can see what you're saying."

"So, what do you think?" Riku asked

Jasmine walked in a circle around the square. "If I go with you, will my father be able to come back? The people will be safe?"

"Yes."

"And Jafar will be gone?"

"Soon enough, yes."

She continued walking, but slower this time. Riku thought of what drove him on this whole journey: The need for freedom. Jasmine wasn't so different in that regard.

"You'll be free from being a princess." He tried, "No need to marry anyone you don't love, or do anything you don't want to. You'd be safe to make your own choices now."

 _No borders around, below, or above._

Her steps slowed.

"Alright. I'll do it," Jasmine said, "I'll go with you."

"Great. Jafar should be somewhere around the castle gates, let's go," He gestured for her to follow, and she did. He continued, "I'll leave you with him for a bit. There's something else I gotta do first before we leave."

"Oh?" Jasmine asked, "What's that?"

"I need to find the keyhole to Agrabah."

* * *

 **SORA**

"I—What—Where did she go?!" Aladdin cried out as they landed in the empty room in Agrabah that he called home. "Where is she?"

Jasmine was gone. The half-torn curtain that was hung partway over the giant hole in one wall floated on the breeze, revealing flashing glimpses of the sprawling streets of the city. Sora stepped off of the magic carpet, and once no riders were left on it the carpet slunk down to the ground forlornly and held one tassel to Aladdin's leg much like a consoling hand.

 _Stop Riku and Maleficent. Save Jasmine._ So, this might have been what she meant.

Sora thought to the heartless, how Aladdin mentioned they had appeared in the city as well.

"Aladdin," She asked him, "Can you tell us exactly what happened with the heartless in the city earlier? Leading up to when Jasmine came here?"

"It started off like any other day," He shrugged. "Me and Jasmine like to meet up at the marketplace on the days it's open to forget life for a little while and just have some fun being normal people. Because she's, well…I can trust you guys not to say anything, right?" Aladdin looked between each of them earnestly. They nodded.

He paused. "The other day, to help me get out of a tight spot with some guards, she revealed herself as the Princess of Agrabah. I'm not gonna bog you down with the details, but today I arrived at the marketplace just as it was opening, the one right in front of the palace. She's never late, sometimes she's even there before I am, already in disguise. But today she hadn't arrived even when the sun was already risen. I was wondering if something came up, but before I could go look for her, the palace doors opened. And everyone started running and screaming."

"The heartless," Donald said. Aladdin gave a nod.

"They burst out of the doors and started going after everybody. I had to keep dodging them and run past them into the palace to find her. Jasmine had hidden in one of the servant's closets, and I got her back to my place here. She'd told me that the Vizier, some awful guy named Jafar, had thrown a coup and exiled her father, the Sultan, using the heartless. They swept aside the palace guards like they were nothing."

"This Jafar guy might be working with Maleficent," Sora said to Donald and Goofy. They agreed.

"Who?" Aladdin asked.

"She's had a hand in the heartless going everywhere we've seen so far!" Goofy answered.

"Maleficent's a powerful sorceress," Donald supplied, "She's bad news."

"Her and people working with her have been using the heartless to do terrible things," Sora said, "They've been kidnapping certain people too."

Aladdin's eyes widened at this. "You don't think they may have kidnapped Jasmine, do you? Jafar and Maleficent?"

"She might have," Donald replied.

"Then let's go! Come on," Aladdin cried, gesturing for everyone to get back on the magic carpet again before jumping on it himself. "We've gotta go find her!"

They flew out the window and alighted on an upswell of wind, and before they knew it the group was flying far above the ground. Below them spiraled the countless neighborhoods and alleyways of Agrabah. Behind them, the Genie stayed close by, his formerly amicable demeanor now turned a little more serious.

The streets were entirely devoid of people. Hopefully, Sora thought, that meant everyone had managed to get indoors before the heartless could get them. She didn't want to think about how many might not have made it in time.

Speaking of the heartless, the creatures were moving in small clusters, roving about through the districts with purpose. Some more minutes of flying later, and she noticed they were following in the same direction.

"You guys," She shouted above the wind, "I think they're going somewhere."

"The castle!" Donald said. "Follow them!"

The magic carpet gave a dizzying swerve to catch up with the closest herd of heartless. Sora could see the formerly distant structure of the castle now getting closer.

"I think I see them," Goofy announced, "There's a couple of people right in front of the doors."

"That's gotta be them!" Aladdin exclaimed.

The magic carpet gave another sickening dive, and a burst in speed. Sora tightly pulled in her arms and legs to avoid hitting a stray limb on any edges of buildings as they passed. Goofy swallowed heavily and closed his eyes, and she could see his muzzle starting to tinge green.

Finally, they came to a stop. Aladdin had already jumped off before the magic carpet had come close enough to the ground for them to step off easily, with Sora and Donald close behind. The monkey that had accompanied Aladdin scampered to the canopies of the abandoned market stalls, creeping closer to Jafar. The Genie gently floated down with an expression of curiosity as he looked around, with Goofy being the last to hobble off the rug.

A girl that looked to be only some years older than Sora stood in front of the castle doors, accompanied by an older man whose form was enrobed in black and scarlet. He carried a staff topped with a carving of a cobra.

"Ah," He sneered, "The street rat is back."

"Jafar," Aladdin grinded his jaw, "Let Jasmine go."

"I wonder, are you here to steal some more bread today?" Jafar asked nonchalantly. "Or perhaps you're looking to set your sights a little higher?" His sneer curled upward at the corner as he waved an arm towards the girl, who looked guilty. Sora could see she wore a jeweled headband that was the same teal color as her outfit. "Though I must say, your sights are set a bit _too_ high. Rats should go crawling back to their holes when the cats are out to play."

"Aladdin, I—" Jasmine took a halted step forward with her arm halfway raised, before slowly lowering it. "I'm so sorry."

"There's nothing to apologize for, none of this is your fault," Aladdin said, before turning to the Genie with the lamp still gripped in his hand. Sora saw that his words did nothing to ease the look on her face. "Genie, help Jasmine!"

"One wish left," The Genie emphasized as he disappeared with the swirl of a sparkling bright blue cloud. Upon reappearing behind Jasmine, and quickly scooping her up and holding her aloft in the air as she looked oddly less than pleased at this development, he said "You're making this really easy, you know!"

Jafar, meanwhile, didn't look surprised in the least bit at this. His smile opened into a grin. "So sorry, boy," He began as a dark shape dived down from the rooftops, and Sora could see a mass of red and blue feathers blur around Aladdin, who gave a noise of surprise as he brought up his arms to protect his face from the parrot's talons. Sora could hear a metallic tinkling noise as the bird pulled away, revealing it to now be carrying the lamp the Genie was bound to. "But I'm afraid your second wish has been denied!"

The bird flew over to Jafar, who awaited it with an outstretched hand. The lamp fell neatly within his palm as the parrot settled onto his shoulder. The Genie sank in palpable disappointment.

"I'm sorry, Al," The Genie said, before reluctantly lowering his arms and letting Jasmine slide out of them towards the ground. And at once, every urn around the market square came to life.

The closest one, a large red urn beside the palace doors, began to shake as four spidery legs burst out of the bottom. It darted forth to catch Jasmine before she could touch the ground, and Jafar quickly waved his staff to levitate the lid on top to seal her inside. They could hear her pounding her fists against the urn from within.

Before the group could burst forth to try and stop it, urns all over the square started making crunching noises as spider legs grew out of the bottoms and upended the urns' contents onto the ground for more speed. Pots of all shapes and sizes started to stampede around the group with a variety of legs shapes—One small sand-toned urn near Sora's foot had what looked like tarantula legs, whereas a tall yellow one that shoved Aladdin aside ran shakily on the legs of a black widow. Red urns identical to the one that imprisoned Jasmine were the most common, and moved as a group, helping confuse the trio and Aladdin as to which one could be holding her captive. And in the middle of it all, Jafar cackled uproariously.

"Finally, I am the master of the lamp!" He crowed, "And I have _you_ to thank, my boy, for doing the grunt work of retrieving it from the cave."

Aladdin went rigid for a split-second with surprise. "That was you? You were the one that told me about the cave of wonders and the Genie's lamp?"

"Of course," Jafar's face shifted into that of a middle-aged man with shadowy eyes before shifting back. He looked pleased at Aladdin's reaction to this. "I was worried that you'd decided to forget about it when you didn't immediately go looking for it like I'd planned you would. So I decided to give you a little push is all."

"Push?" Aladdin questioned. The urns continued to mill about, faster now.

"Did you really think it was a coincidence that I also overthrew the Sultan today? That I sided with Maleficent to gain control over the heartless that terrorized the citizens of Agrabah? Come now, street rat, don't tell me your wits only extend to stealing bread."

"So you _are_ working with Maleficent!" Donald shouted. Jafar finally seemed to notice the rest of the group assembled in the market square at his cry.

"'Was'. I was working with Maleficent," He answered, "But no longer have I need of that hag's resources. Why should I, when I have all the power I'll ever need or want right in my hand?"

"You exiled Jasmine's father, you hurt all those people…just for that lamp?" Aladdin bit out.

"It's for far more than just a lamp, boy," Jafar spoke. "It's for power. Not that you'll know anything about that."

At this, Jafar began to stroll down the main thoroughfare of the market square, surrounded by those living urns. The group made to pursue but were quickly cut off by a slew of heartless that had been waiting in the alleyways. The group readied their weapons—Sora with her keyblade, Goofy with his shield, Donald with his staff, and Aladdin with a scimitar he'd picked up off a nearby market stall—But it wasn't enough. Sora could see a large blue silhouette morosely stalking off with Jafar out of the corner of her eye.

They were getting away.

* * *

 **RIKU**

Thirty minutes into searching and he still wasn't even sure where to begin.

Where could the keyhole possibly be? Riku considered the castle, but after further inspection ruled it out. The heartless didn't seem to have any interest in remaining there after the coup went successfully and the remaining servants and guards were chased away. The only ones left behind in that area were the ones Jafar had commanded to stay close to him, from what Riku remembered.

So that only left the remaining entirety of the sprawling chaotic labyrinth that formed the city of Agrabah. He sighed. Riku could feel his mild sunburn bypass into a sun-stained flush and he fished an elixir out of his pocket. Upon drinking it he watched his skin return to its former pallor, but Riku could still feel the echoes of the burn in the way his skin continued to prickle.

"A place that is significant to a person or the world's people," He murmured to himself. Was it in a temple, perhaps? Or some other sort of ceremonial area? But before Riku could think on the matter further, he heard a chittering noise coming up from behind him.

It was Jafar. And with him, a herd of pottery running on spider legs that looked to be the source of the noise, and a giant cartoonish looking man whose skin was a surprising blue color.

Jafar threw Riku a scowl. "You've been dawdling for quite long enough. Come, boy."

Riku matched his glower, but ultimately complied. "I've been trying to look for the keyhole," He defended. He glanced around. "Where's Jasmine?"

"Then you haven't been trying particularly hard, have you?" Jafar said over his shoulder. A glimmer of light caught Riku's eye and he looked down to see Jafar tightly clutched at some metal object he couldn't readily identify. "Don't worry about her now, focus on the keyhole, boy. The heartless have been attracted to the Cave of Wonders. It must be in there somewhere."

"Cave of Wonders?"

This time, it was the blue man who answered. "A legendary cave full of treasure, riches beyond your wildest dreams, yadda yadda yadda," He sighed forlornly. "And the former holding place for my portable prison."

"Who are you?"

At this, he tried to straighten up somewhat, like he was attempting to feign excitement but failing miserably. "The Genie!" He waved his hands to make a small rainbow between them, but it sagged and went off-toned. The Genie gave up and smacked his hands together to get rid of it, and the rainbow made a sound like wrinkling paper as he did so. "Can grant any three wishes, but no wishing for more wishes, or wishing for someone to die or come back to life, or fall in love with you."

"No wishing for someone to die? What a pity," Jafar spoke as he looked over his shoulder, past Iago who was still sitting upon his sloped epaulet. "They won't be distracted for long. We'll have to hurry."

"Oh, that'd be just awful, wouldn't it _master?_ " The Genie grumbled, and then he got a look of inspiration. His hands were hidden behind the sudden appearance of a sparkling bright blue cloud, and it was revealed he had conjured a megaphone. It was strikingly modern against the backdrop of primitive-looking sandstone buildings. The Genie raised the megaphone to his mouth and flicked it on with an electric whine from the speaker. "That'd be pretty dang awful if Aladdin and his pals pursued us to the _CAVE OF WONDERS!_ " He finished with a shout.

The sound carried widely throughout the city, and Riku could hear the phrase reflected back from a hundred different directions. It appeared the city of Agrabah had remarkable acoustics.

Jafar gritted his teeth so hard Riku could see a vein begin to pulse in his temple. His eyes darted from the direction of the market square to the rest of the way they had yet to traverse before leaving city limits, and he seemed to come to a conclusion.

He waved his staff, the edges of it gliding along the surface of a large Dark Portal. He beckoned forth from it a large heartless that looked quite like a tiger, who immediately kneeled down onto the sand as it saw him.

Jafar climbed on and motioned for Riku to do the same. As Riku awkwardly grabbed onto the heartless' fur for leverage to climb, he saw one of the pots with spider's legs hike up onto the heartless tiger's back as well. The rest of the pots that had accompanied him when he'd found Riku dispersed amongst the streets.

"Perhaps that'll distract them for a while," He said, before waving his staff at the heartless tiger. And with this, they traveled fast to the Cave of Wonders with the Genie reluctantly close behind.

Upon their arrival at the mouth of the cave—a literal mouth, Riku discovered, for the entrance to the cave itself was shaped exactly like a jungle cat's head poised mid-roar—the heartless tiger deposited them in the sand and bounded away at Jafar's dismissal.

Quickly the group their way into the entrance hall. It was scarcely lit, with the only light coming from flaming torches around some parts of the chamber, leaving swathes of the room in darkness. Riku could hear rumbling reverberate through the walls and he felt the ground beneath his feet tremble slightly. And then, from somewhere in front of them, gushing water.

"More confounded setbacks," Jafar murmured to himself. As he spoke, Riku jumped at a thunderous noise from very close by, and they saw a giant boulder run down a stone ramp and continue its trek down into the black chasm that yawned open at one side of the room.

Jafar waved his staff again, this time muttering an incantation, and the boulder paused in place. The waterfall ceased to crash against the stony floor. The rumbling stopped. The entire chamber had gone silent, and Riku could almost hear his heartbeat in his ears.

"Keep up, boy," Jafar commanded as he strode through the walkway casually. The urn crept close behind on its legs, moving animatedly, with the only sound it gave off being a hushed clanging sound as its lid shifted with the movement. The Genie floated behind at a slight distance. "You don't want to see how you'll do when those traps come back to life."

Riku inwardly agreed, though he didn't want to give the man the satisfaction of voicing it aloud. He stalked behind with soft footsteps, unwilling to disturb the quiet.

Hall after hall they moved, in an endless part of muttered incantations and quietude that paradoxically left Riku's ears nearly ringing at times. None of them spoke as they moved.

And finally, they came up on a room that was far more brightly lit than the rest. Blazing torches put off light from every corner of the room, with their flickering gleaming cast back in countless reflections from the piles of treasure stacked high to the ceiling. Everywhere he looked, Riku could see his own face stare back in crooked echoes across the polished surfaces of coins, cups, and treasure of all shapes. It was harder to be quiet here as the baubles were spread across the floor, making their footsteps tinkle.

Up ahead Riku could see a long, dark hallway stretch out at the very end of the room.

As the group got closer, his footsteps slowed until he was at the very back of the group. And as they made their way through the hallway he slowed even more, with nobody even noticing his lagging behind. Riku could see a light at the end of the tunnel, and a figure by the far wall. He stopped.

It was Maleficent.

The others walked on into the room, oblivious. Riku thought he could see Jafar's sloping epaulets shift slightly as his shoulders went perfectly straight. His hand clutching the lamp grew tighter as his shoulders relaxed again. Iago, however, was visibly trembling. The Genie looked just as downcast as he did when Riku first met him, entirely unchanged.

The others continued walking into the room, not noticing Riku's absence. He sidled up to the wall, trying to remain nonvisible, as he had noticed by now Maleficent had an odd look on her face. Or more accurately, no look at all. Her expression was perfectly blank.

The pinprick feeling returned to his skin, and Riku could see goosebumps begin to surface on his arms. His pulse raced as his breathing went shallow, and the part of his mind that ran on pure instinct forbade him from going into that room. But then again, Riku's curiosity was never easily managed.

Riku slid down the wall until he got into a squatting position as he tried to take up as little space as possible. He assessed the room. A circular chamber comprised of little else other than unhewn rock. At the far end he could see a platform constructed of stone bricks, just like the ones that constructed the buildings back in Agrabah. Around the edges of the ceiling wrapped a wide stone ring that was capped at several points with giant monkey statues that clutched large glowing jewels in their hands. Maybe Riku could hide behind one of those.

It was a reckless idea, he knew, but his curiosity was mounting. Riku closed his eyes and concentrated on summoning the smallest Dark portal he could, but still just big enough for him to slide through. He saw the other end of the portal open up just behind one monkey statue whose gem glowed green. Nobody gave any indication that they had noticed it form. With that thought in mind, Riku inched the edge of his shoe through the portal, and slowly crawled through.

It worked. Riku squinted to see past the green light of the gem as he huddled closer to it and tightly curled in on himself. He prayed nobody looked up.

But, thankfully, it seemed everyone's attention was reserved solely for Maleficent, whose eyes bored right into Jafar.

"I suppose I should thank you," Jafar said airily. He held up the lamp clutched tightly in his hand. "Master of the lamp and master of Agrabah. I couldn't have done it without your help."

"And in return, what was it you called me?" Maleficent replied in a conversational tone, "Ah. Yes. 'That hag'. An interesting choice of words."

Riku couldn't see Jafar's face very well, but he saw his skin blanch to the point of even his neck going a sallow tone.

"I'm not going to apologize to the likes of _you,"_ He spat. "I'm through with being your underling."

"What a pity. And just as we were getting so close to our reward, too."

"What, you mean those plans of yours for the Heart beyond the Door?" Jafar chuckled as he strode towards the urn with spider legs. "Please. You wouldn't know what to do with it when you get there. _If_ you get there. You can't even corral that boy of yours to do his job right. Do you see him anywhere? Obviously not. He didn't even bother to show his face here."

"He's smarter than you realize. You do not know the value of an intelligent set of hands."

Jafar scoffed. "He's a liability. Especially with how you're willing to play along with his delusions of—what was it? Balance between Light and Dark?" He barked out a laugh. "How childish. What need would anyone have for Light when Dark can do so much more? Here's a much better plan: Why don't you put that supposed intelligence of his to work and actually explain the situation to that boy? Stop coddling him with delusions of 'balance', tell him of your plans with the princesses. Doing so may actually prove useful to your objective."

"Patience is a virtue, Jafar," Maleficent chided, "And so is caution."

"Virtues? Hah! The professed 'Mistress of All Evil' speaks to me of _virtue_. Now I've seen everything. I wonder if the fires of Jahannam have gone cold."

He continued, shaking his head, "'Patience'. 'Caution'. Be honest with yourself and say it's cowardice that stays your hand. And it's cowardice that'll be your undoing." Jafar held up the lamp. "But it's nothing to me now. You and your league of dunces were never much of a match for me anyway. I'll have to gather the princesses and unlock the door myself—starting with Jasmine!"

Jafar waved his staff, and the urn that crawled on spider legs was quickly reduced to dust. The cloud settled after a moment to reveal Jasmine sprawled out on the floor, passed out.

When he left her with Jafar earlier that day, Riku didn't think it would result in this. His Heart lurched with guilt at the sight.

Maleficent looked on at her. At first, she looked disinterested, but then a small sly smile crossed her face.

"And what of the keyholes?" She asked.

"Such is the power of the lamp," Jafar answered as he turned to the Genie, who had been looking on at this turn of events with growing unease. "Genie! For my first wish, reveal the keyhole to Agrabah!"

The Genie raised his arm haltingly, as if he were actively trying to restrain himself to no avail. His hand clawed fearfully after he snapped his fingers with a wince.

The effect was immediate. A deep rumbling noise resounded throughout the cavern, perhaps even the entire cave, strong enough to nearly throw Riku off-balance and risk revealing his hiding place. He gripped the arm of the monkey statue beside him to hold on as the rumbling continued, the source of which was revealed to be a thick stone veneer crumbling away from the brick platform at the end of the room. As the noise stopped and the dust settled, Riku could see Jafar had turned to Maleficent with a crocodilian grin. And, bewilderingly, he saw that that small smile had remained on her face. If anything, it had widened.

He heard distant footsteps coming from the hallway.

"And for my second wish," Jafar continued, "Make me the ultimate sorcerer, so that I may fell this demon at last."

* * *

 **SORA**

Nobody spoke this time as the group made their way to the Cave of Wonders. Even Abu's constant chirrups and trailing clangors had gone quiet as his eyes darted to Aladdin.

 _The fight against the spider-pots, as Sora had dubbed them, was short and promptly abandoned. There was no point in getting bogged down with fending them off, especially when the market square's ground was now slippery with spilled food from the urns upending themselves. The more they waited, the farther Jafar—and Jasmine—got away._

 _Sora moved to help Donald shake off a dallah with the legs of a black widow that had crawled onto his back, but before she could reach him the spider-pot was knocked off by several pomegranates that were hurled from above. They looked up to see Abu had made his way onto the magic carpet with more edible ammo at the ready._

" _Thanks, Abu," Donald said, and the monkey gave a warbling babble in response. "Aladdin, we can't stay here. We have to go after them."_

" _You're right." He said, and looked to the sky towards where Abu was now pelting some of the urns with apples. "Hey, carpet! We have to get out of here!"_

 _The magic carpet waved one of its tassels in a gesture mimicking a salute and bucked off the rest of the fruit Abu had gathered on it, before making its way down to the group. They got on quickly, holding on tightly as the magic carpet careened towards the sky in pursuit._

" _Gawrsh, do ya know where they might be going?"_

 _At this, everyone in the group angled their heads sharply as they heard Genie's voice boom across the rooftops, preceded by a faint electric whine._

" _That'd be pretty dang awful if Aladdin and his pals pursued us to the CAVE OF WONDERS!"_

 _The phrase was repeated to them from seemingly all corners of the city. The magic carpet complied without needing a command, veering from one side of the city to making a beeline for the city gates up north._

" _Sure was nice of the Genie to do that," Goofy remarked as he turned faintly green again._

 _Aladdin cracked a smile. "I think he likes Jafar about as much as we do."_

 _Sora glanced down to the city streets, seeing more of those spider-pots milling about. One plain red one caught her eye._

 _She pointed excitedly at it, nearly falling off the magic carpet as she did so. "You guys! That one looks just like the urn Jasmine was thrown into. Do you think she's in that one?"_

 _Aladdin looked over quickly. "It_ does _look exactly the same."_

" _No way. It can't be," Donald said, "There was about a dozen other urns that looked identical to hers in the market place, he'd want to keep hers close for sure. No doubt Jafar dispersed the rest to try and trick us."_

 _And so they decided to stay the course._

After sliding off of the magic carpet, Sora looked up at the mouth of the cave. The feline shape of it, mouth open wide as if it were ready to devour anyone who tried to enter, took her off guard slightly.

"Why is it shaped like that?" Donald asked.

"The name Cave of Wonders is sort of a misnomer," Aladdin said as he quickly made his way towards the entrance. "Really, this cave is a god."

"A god?" Donald said incredulously.

Aladdin nodded. "The tiger deity is a god of fortune. Be good, and he'll bring you luck. But if you're bad, he'll give you misfortune instead. That's what he told me when I came in the first time, when I got Genie's lamp."

"The cave talked to you?" Sora asked.

He nodded again.

"He told me to proceed, but touch nothing but the lamp," Aladdin said, and his words were accompanied by a guilty-sounding whine from Abu, who had climbed onto his back. Aladdin smiled. "Abu here tried nabbing a giant ruby, which set the cave off and nearly got us killed. That took me some thinking, but we got out."

They stepped over the vicious-looking teeth and made their way into the first room of the cave. There was a rumbling that seemed to be constantly present and the sound of water gushing at intervals. It was poorly lit, with the only light they were able to see by coming from the odd torch here and there on the walls.

"Gawrsh, how did ya— _Ah-yipe!_ " Goofy cried as a booming sound came from not too far off. The rumbling was now joined by the ground shaking slightly.

"We need to move!" Aladdin shouted, as the magic carpet instantly repositioned itself to be at the ready for them to climb on again.

The moment they all made their way onto it and stationed themselves, the magic carpet took off with a burst of speed, ducking and swerving around traps of all kinds. Or, what looked to be traps. Sora saw jets where water or some sort of liquid was supposed to come out of, and a giant ramp high up above them, but nothing came for them. She seized up and kept her eye trained on a series of small holes in the walls as the magic carpet made its way through room after room, each one as poorly lit as the last, but thankfully nothing ever shot out of them. It was as if time were stopped in the cave, or perhaps the god Aladdin spoke of was watching out for them.

The rug finally slowed as it arrived in a room bursting with treasure. The room itself was brightly lit in comparison to the others, with many more torches arranged on the walls. On the sides, ornately carved fireplaces provided more lighting from their flames. Sora could feel her eyes widening at the sight of so much gold, and she wrenched her head left and right as she took in the sight of emeralds bigger than Goofy's shield. And then, she saw Donald.

"Donald! Don't touch anything!" She exclaimed, as he snapped his hand away from a pile of coins. Donald looked at the piles of treasure hungrily.

"I just wanna hold it for a second," He said longingly, "Maybe try and swim in a pile of it. What?" Donald asked crossly as she continued glaring at him. He folded his arms stubbornly. "Don't judge me, my Uncle Scrooge does it with his money!"

"We're gonna get killed 'cause you wanted to try using this place as a swimming pool," Sora huffed.

"Anyone else hear talking from up ahead?" Goofy asked. They all angled their heads towards the approaching dark hallway at the end of the room, and the closer they got the more they could see a light at the end of it.

"Now that you mention it, I think I can." Sora said.

The rug slowed to a halt at the midway point in the hallway and they got off and walked farther towards the room. She could see Jafar, the Genie, and most worryingly, Jasmine. She was passed out on a stony brick platform at the far end of the room. Standing over her was a woman in black robes Sora didn't recognize.

"There she is!" Aladdin said, and burst into a run. They followed closely behind him.

Jafar had his staff in one hand and his lamp in the other, which was raised high. The Genie looked on fearfully at him and the other woman, who, as Sora could now see as they made their way into the room, had green skin.

"—So that I may fell this demon at last." Jafar commanded. They quickly turned to look at the group as they ran into the room.

That green skin. Those horns. Sora remembered a warning Aerith had given her not long after she sealed the keyhole to Traverse Town.

" _She's easy to recognize. Maleficent is beautiful, but warped: Her skin is green, and she wears a headpiece with two horns on it. Usually she carries a staff. You can't miss her," Aerith's expression then went unusually stern. "If you see her, be careful. Be very careful. Remember, she could be the one behind the heartless everywhere and the worlds falling."_

Sora saw the Genie shamefully cover his eyes with one hand and slowly raise his other hand with the pointer finger outstretched in the corner of her eye, but her gaze was locked on the woman with green skin who stood over Jasmine.

"Wait a second," Sora gasped. "Are you Maleficent?"

The woman said nothing, her sly smile unfaltering. And with but a second's pause, she faded from view entirely. Sora could see a large keyhole in the wall behind where she was.

Aladdin spoke next. "Jasmine?" He said, and tried again, louder, "Jasmine! What did you do to her, Jafar?"

He laughed. "'Tis but a short slumber I'm sure, street rat," And with that Jafar turned to the Genie, who was still slowly raising his hand, and growled, "Any time now, Genie."

"Genie, stop!" Aladdin cried.

The Genie lifted his hand from his eyes just enough to look at the group. "I'm sorry, Al," He said, and a bright beam of light burst from the tip of his outstretched finger towards Jafar, who was now wrapped in a light so overwhelming they all had to turn away.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" A grating voice called out from above. They looked up to see the parrot that had accompanied Jafar earlier now flying around the room. "A warm Agrabah welcome for Sorcerer Jafar!"

The light surrounding Jafar began to dim, and they could see his garments had changed slightly: His turban now had developed horn-like protrusions, with the gold detailing now having gone jagged. The sash around his waist now matched the detailing with its gold hue. But the biggest change was to his staff—the cobra carved at the top now had small fangs bared in a hiss, with glowing red eyes.

"I'm so sad to see our guest of honor has decided to leave the party right as it started," Jafar gloated as he stalked towards the group. "I was right after all, she really is a coward. But I suppose I'll have to come after her later; I think I'll test out my power on _you_ first."

He reared back his staff with a bay of laughter and bursts of light erupted from it towards all corners of the room, leaving trails of smoking soot on the walls. Another jab, and fire that was so hot it was blue at the base sprung up all around the room. The group scattered as they tried to get out of the way of his spells.

Aladdin lunged towards Jasmine, hoping to reach her. But it was no use. The second Jafar caught sight of him, he imprisoned Jasmine behind a forcefield that stretched to the keyhole.

"Don't pretend that I don't know exactly what you're here for," He called out with another laugh. "The keyblade always seeks the keyhole."

He snapped his fingers, and Sora's feet were immediately encased in blocks of stone. She struggled to lift her legs, much less try and fight in any way beyond moving her arms. She gritted her teeth.

"Why are you doing this?!" Sora shouted, "Why are you working with her? She's trying to destroy everything!"

Donald threw the most powerful frost spell he could at Jafar, and it was immediately reflected back tenfold. The biting chill enswathed the chamber and momentarily weakened the flames to an orange glow, and sharp bits of ice stung against their exposed skin. Sora heaved her legs to get out of the way, but not before taking a particularly jagged piece to her cheek. She tried raising her keyblade in a guarding position to deflect the worst of it, and Goofy jogged over to raise his shield against the blizzard and cover for them both.

Aladdin lunged again, and Jafar lazily waved his staff. Aladdin was instantly thrown to the edge of the room straight towards the flames. Sora caught movement just beyond Goofy's shield and looked to see Jasmine's head shifted slightly from how it was before. Was she waking up?

Jafar made the lightning Donald threw at him into a rain cloud that dissipated quickly, before launching a bolt of his own at him. As Donald jumped on impact, Jafar said, "Weren't you listening earlier?"

With another bolt of lightning aimed at Goofy's shield, he continued, "It's about power."

The lightning struck, and both Sora and Goofy ducked behind the shield as best they could, hearing the electricity shriek. Thankfully, while the branches of it bit and left daggered shocks across their skin, the worst of it was avoided thanks to the shield. Sora could see the lightning begin to strobe behind her wrenched-shut eyelids.

Aladdin, who had by now made his way out of the fire and had been healed by Donald enough to where his skin was a pinker tone, suddenly got a look of inspiration. He glanced at the Genie, who had taken to cowering in the corner and making himself fold up like origami until he was a blue paper swan bouncing around on the ground. "'Power'," Aladdin said as he smacked a fist in his other hand, "That's it!"

"Then why are you trying to take Jasmine?" Sora shouted as the lightning continued to wail. "She's got nothing to do with this!"

"On the contrary, insolent girl, she's got everything to do with this." Jafar answered. "You see, she's more than just the princess of Agrabah. She's a Princess of Heart. One of seven who somehow hold the key to opening the Door."

Donald and Goofy shared a quick look at this.

At that, Aladdin jumped in, saying excitedly, "Gee, Jafar. What you're looking to do sounds like an awfully tall order."

Jafar fixed Aladdin with a look that implied he thought Aladdin was an idiot. "I have power beyond even Maleficent now, I'm capable of anything I please."

"I dunno," Aladdin continued, his voice just on the edge of boasting. He turned away from Jafar and Sora could see he had an impish grin. "You said you were doing this for power, right? Can you really say you're more powerful than Maleficent if you're not even the most powerful being in the world?"

"What exactly are you saying, boy?" Jafar grated as he clenched his staff tightly again. Sora could see a malevolent purple light seep out at the edges of it. He lowered his staff, still glowing purple, and the magic he had cast died down somewhat: The flames were now just smoldering blackened sand, the blizzard waned to a chilled wind. The lightning tapered to the point that it was nonexistent. Aladdin now had his whole attention.

"The genie has more power than you'll ever have! He gave you your power, he could take it away."

"Al?" The Genie whispered. Sora looked over to see the origami swan he folded himself into unfolded just enough to let his head peek out of the paper neck. "What are you doing? Why are you bringing me into this?"

Aladdin gave the Genie a wink. "Face it, Jafar," He continued, "You're still just second best."

Jafar got a thoughtful look on his face, and his eyes darted about as he contemplated Aladdin's words. "You're right. His power does exceed my own, for he could have power over me! Nothing could be guaranteed unless we were…equals," He said breathlessly, and looked to Genie, who was still mostly folded up and watching him with an anxious expression. "Slave! I will make my third wish."

The Genie quickly unfolded into his normal appearance and gave a nervous laugh. "The boy is crazy," he reasoned, "He's a little punch-drunk, one too many hits! Don't, don't listen to him—"

But Jafar cut him off. "I wish to be an all-powerful genie!"

The Genie took a deep breath.

"Alright, your, uh, your wish is my command," he muttered, "Way to _go_ , Al," The Genie finished sarcastically.

The Genie clenched his eyes shut again as he slowly lifted his hand in a finger gun pose. He fired a spiraling bolt of magic that hit Jafar square in the chest with a tremulous noise.

The magic spread outwards from where it hit him, and lightning began to snake all up and down Jafar's body. His face twisted in pain as he bent over, and suddenly he righted himself. His expression distorted into one of malevolent euphoria that was at odds with the lightning still crackling and screeching along himself. Finally, Jafar took several shaky steps forward as he dropped the lamp, which was quickly scooped up by the parrot.

"This feeling," He howled, "This feeling is everything! Absolute power right at my fingertips!" Jafar brayed with laughter. The ground began to shake violently, and Sora saw Jasmine begin to rise from behind Jafar. She looked over at the series of events with what seemed to be equal parts bewilderment and horror.

And then, a great chasm opened up below.

* * *

 **RIKU**

For a while after the chasm opened up, all he could do was sit there and blink.

Sora was there. She wasright there _,_ and had somehow known to come to Agrabah in the first place.

How? Was it something to do with that keyblade? Or something else?

He pushed that thought from his mind in favor of thinking on what Jafar had said. What Maleficent had said.

" _She's a Princess of Heart. One of seven who somehow hold the key to opening the Door."_

But that was at odds with what Maleficent had told him.

" _But Princesses of Heart are theorized to be capable of bringing Light back to worlds' Hearts and to stem the tide of Darkness across all worlds. Surely you must understand why it is important that we keep them from doing such things."_

" _Right," Riku answered. "Balance."_

" _Balance." Maleficent echoed with a simpering smile._

No. She couldn't have been lying, not about that. Because that would mean the hooded figure who had given Riku so much—the one who had taught him about power and Darkness, who helped him open the door, who had helped him be _free_ —was lying. But so far, everything he had told Riku was the truth. So therefore, that meant Maleficent hadn't lied either, at least in regard to that.

But that didn't mean she wasn't telling him the whole truth.

" _Tell him of your plans with the princesses,"_ Jafar had told her.

And then there was what Maleficent had said: _"And just as we were getting so close to our reward, too."_

Riku thought she was helping him in all of this for the greater good, not some reward.

He thought of Kairi's lifeless body laid out on that bed in Hollow Bastion. The image of her, face slackened, with dust motes twinkling like stars around her head and spiders crawling at her feet. Was Maleficent giving him these tasks to help Kairi, even just a little bit? Was she still doing it for balance, or was she just doing it for a prize like this was a game?

Riku summoned Soul Eater to his hand and stared at it. It gave off an infernal light as it was bathed in the glow of the statue's jewel beside him. The little eye in the hilt appeared as if it were staring back at him.

The man who gave him everything was right about Darkness being strength. And maybe it extended to more than just strength, but wisdom too. The man had the power to give Riku this much so far, who knew what else he was capable of. Maybe he knew of a way to save Kairi. The only unfortunate part, Riku remembered, was that he hadn't seen him since.

And now Riku wasn't entirely sure if he could trust Maleficent.

With that thought in mind, he stood up and dismissed Soul Eater from his hand. And Riku held his hand towards the stone wall as he summoned a Dark portal before walking through.

Riku exited onto the stone platform underneath, just below the keyhole. He could hear Jasmine turn to look at him. Riku continued peering closely at the keyhole, ignoring her.

"You," She hissed angrily.

"Me." How was he supposed to open this? There weren't any hinges from what he could tell.

"You had to be in on this. There's no doubt about it," Jasmine stomped towards him angrily and lurched to a halt as he mentally shrugged and raised his hand to the keyhole anyways. Her next words came out almost choked. "What…What are you doing?"

"'All beings need balance between Light and Dark. Even worlds.'" Riku recited.

"Balance? It's funny you decided to bring that up again now," Jasmine said. "You said I was just going to be dropped off with Jafar for a little while. 'Don't worry', you said, 'it'll be fine, nothing will happen.'" Her voice began to raise. "You said nothing about being taken hostage or watching Jafar try to kill the man I love! You come back now with the same story about balance, about doing the right thing, and you expect me to fall for it twice!"

Riku said nothing, and only used his anger at her words to fuel his Darkness further as he continued to reach for the keyhole. _I must take this Heart,_ he reminded himself. If Maleficent wasn't going to do the right thing, that didn't mean Riku shouldn't try to. From behind, he could hear Jasmine give a shudder as his Darkness spiked just a little more, a little closer to the Heart of Agrabah. It was harder to reach the Heart with the keyhole still in the way.

The part of him that clung to hope wished that Maleficent were here to help him get the keyhole and whatever else shielded the Heart out of the way, so that he could complete his task, but Riku forcibly shoved that thought out of his head.

"Whatever you're doing to that thing, stop it." Jasmine commanded. He ignored her.

"Stop it," Jasmine said again. Riku continued to ignore her, dredging up the fear that Maleficent lied to him to force his Darkness further into the keyhole. He could feel it as it crept closer, and in his mind's eye he saw the outer edges of a great Heart that gave off a Light that sparkled like a spring in an oasis. A Light with a pulsing, spiraling beacon like a lighthouse just before sunrise.

A Light that would soon be snuffed to make way for eventide.

But before he could reach any more, something thwacked against him and Riku's legs went out from under him. He whipped his head up to see Jasmine staring down at him with a furious expression. She had stopped his tampering with the Heart by kicking him in the back of the knees.

Riku angrily scrambled to his feet and followed her eyes to look down at his hand. He had summoned Soul Eater without consciously doing so. Riku forced it away with a guilty pang in his Heart.

"No," Jasmine said. He glanced back at her and saw she had clenched her fists to her sides and pushed back her shoulders in defiance. "Bring your sword back. Do it."

He didn't know what to feel at that. "Why?"

"Whatever you were going to do next, do it. I dare you," She spoke through her gritted teeth, keeping her eyes fixed on him. "I have nothing left but the will to fight."

"Nothing left?" Riku gave a harsh guffaw that hurt to make. "You have _everything_. Even now."

"I have nothing!" Jasmine snarled, "My father is gone, Aladdin could be dead for all I know!"

"You had parents who loved you in the first place!" He exploded. All of the quiet little thoughts that had been mounting over the course of the day came to the fore. "You still have your father even now! And don't try and tell me he could be dead, I saw how the people loyal to him acted in the castle earlier. Most likely he's just hiding out in some cushy little corner of one of their houses crying about being separated from you and losing a throne he never even earned, Jafar didn't care enough about him to do anything permanent."

"How _dare_ you-!"

Riku went on. "Sure, he's a wimp, but he loves you. He was trying to set you up in a situation where you wouldn't have to want for anything! Literally, all you'd have to do is just read a script every day and everything would be handed to you on a platter, but what did you say about that? _'I have to choose who to spend the rest of my life with like I'm choosing which fruit looks the best from a market stall'_. Is that really so bad?"

"Yes!" She clenched her fists tighter. "I'd have to marry a man who just considers me some accessory to his life at best, and less than human at worst! The sultanate of Agrabah, all of my father's work, it's not even my birthright! The best end scenario would be all of that going to the hands of a man who at least loves me and will do good with the throne, but if I just settle, everything would hang in the balance of someone who just sees me as the means to an end!" Jasmine yelled.

Apart from the commotion coming from below and the rumbling of the cave all around them, there was quiet. She unclenched her hands and took a deep breath, and Riku could see where her fingernails left crescent imprints. "Is it really so bad that I want room for love in my marriage?" She ended in a quieter note.

Riku thought of his parents. His mother tried marrying for love, and his father did too. He had to have, as he'd said yes in the first place. And look where it got them. Look where it got their son.

He tasted bile on the back of his tongue.

"Yeah," He said sadly. "Yeah. It is."

Riku continued, "There's never room for love in something like that. They could _say_ they love you all they want but they don't feel anything when they do. Or worse, seeing you makes them feel angry."

She stared at him for a long moment with slight disbelief.

"Did you really think I didn't already know that?" Jasmine gave a laugh that was more exasperated than humorous. "Did you really think—Did you really _delude_ yourself into thinking I haven't seen such a thing happen with my own eyes? That I haven't experienced it? After everything I've told you, even what I've said a minute ago. You weren't listening to any of that."

"Yes, I was—"

"No, you weren't," She cut in. "I get it now. You're just like all the rest. Another jerk who blames everything wrong with his life on some past tragedy. Someone so focused on feeling sorry for himself that he can't even bother with looking around for a second and realizing that everyone around him is suffering too, but they still manage to keep going. They go outside and pretend like everything's okay and still manage to empathize with everyone they see. But not you. Boys like you just look at their smiles and don't look any further, not noticing how they might be strained around the edges, and have the audacity to get angry about it: Because how dare other people try to be happy when you're not happy. Everything revolves around you."

"'Some past tragedy" is a _pretty light_ _way of putting it._ " He fumed. Jasmine shook her head.

"Agrabah is not a pretty place. I know this for a fact," She said, "Aladdin's father left him and his mother, and his mother died when Aladdin barely knew how to walk. Imagine a child that young left to the streets, and he's one of the lucky ones who made it as far as he did." Her shoulders fell slightly. "Sleeping under the stars sounds romantic until it's the only choice you have. But he never minded it. Aladdin would point out Syrma or Alrescha and all the lunar mansions, and that alone could make him happy. I love him because he can find the silver lining in anything despite what he's experienced."

"After a certain point," She concluded, "What's wrong with you isn't your past. It's not even your Darkness, or your Light, or an imbalance between the two. It's you. You are all of the things wrong with you. You need to be better."

Riku wasn't sure what to feel. There was fury, yes, but that was slowly being drowned out by the nagging sense of doubt in his own words. His own beliefs.

Perhaps Jasmine was right.

 _No._ She couldn't be. He couldn't bear to even acknowledge the idea, and so he didn't. Riku pushed that feeling aside to a corner of his mind to be quickly forgotten.

He thought of Kairi's comatose body, and of the man with the hood who had given him what he needed most. Jasmine was wrong, he realized. If only about one thing.

"Despite what you think, I am trying to be better," Riku said, "Even when the people around me probably aren't interested in doing so." He said as he thought of Maleficent.

Jasmine lifted a brow at Riku as a gesture for him to continue.

"Even if Maleficent's not interested in balance between Light and Dark, I know it's important. And I'm going to work towards it, even if you say it's false, even if nobody wants to help. I'm _not_ wallowing in my pain or whatever it is you think I'm doing."

"Still seems like it to me."

He stopped for a moment as he bit back his anger.

"Whatever," Riku spat finally. "I still need you to come with me."

At this, Jasmine gave him the most disbelieving look yet.

"You really are an idiot. Why are you even bothering to ask?"

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. I can't let you risk continuing the tyranny of Light. Either you come with me or you stay here in a broken world whose new ruler just became a force of nature," Riku said, "You don't have a choice."

"I could stay here and die when this cave finally collapses in. It would be better than going with you."

"Then you'd be guaranteed to never see either Aladdin or your father again."

She paused. The cave continued to rumble forebodingly, louder now. And then she exhaled harshly through her teeth.

"Fine. But don't lie to yourself later and say all of this is for some 'tyranny of Light'. Do yourself a favor and admit the truth."

He said nothing to that, choosing to silently raise his hand to summon the Dark portal that would take them back to Hollow bastion. It ripped open on the granitic wall in front of them. Riku could see Jasmine give a shudder at it out of the corner of his eye.

And then, they stepped through.

* * *

 **SORA**

As they fell, Sora's vision was dominated by a dimmed red light.

It was lava. Somehow, Jafar's transformation had sparked the opening of a chasm beneath the group that sent them to a chamber through which quite a bit of magma flowed. It billowed with heat far greater than the noonday sun outside in Agrabah had, worse than any heat Sora had faced before save for Donald's worst fire spells. Though even this heat could have been said to match those.

Her landing on the stone platform was awkward and painful, given her shoes were still encased in stone blocks. They fell with a solid thud as the rest of her landed in a jumbled heap. Sora groaned.

And then, suddenly, her feet felt impossibly light. She looked down to see the stone blocks disappear with a snap of the Genie's fingers.

"Sorry, kid," He said, "At least I could undo a part of _that_ wish." The Genie said with chagrin.

"You can't do anything to undo this one?" Sora asked as she moved to stand. The Genie shook his head.

"Genies can't undo each other's magic directly or hurt another genie in any way directly." He explained, "So if Jafar made a lightning strike, I couldn't stop the lightning or keep it from being cast, but I could just wrap everything in an inch-thick layer of rubber to keep the electricity from hitting the target directly. Ya see what I mean?"

"I think I do."

Their talk was interrupted by the magma from one end of the room beginning to roil and swell. A large glowing red shape slowly lifted from the magma with a boom of laughter.

It was Jafar.

His new form was not unlike the Genie's, with a hulking visage that was larger than life. But unlike the Genie, whose bright blue color and rounded features made him more approachable, Jafar's effect was the exact opposite: He glowed as red as a stoplight, with his already sharp features now exaggerated to be so much sharper and crueler. His head was now bare of any head coverings, revealing a mostly shaved head with a ponytail sticking out at the top. His nails were now viciously long and pointed, with his hands crossed over his shoulders and chest. The lower half of Jafar's torso tapered to a gaseous tail that stayed bonded to the lava.

It all made for a terrifying sight.

"Nice job, Aladdin!" Donald yelled sarcastically. "It was bad enough trying to fight a master sorcerer before."

"Seriously, Al," The Genie muttered.

"I have an idea!" Aladdin insisted, and suddenly looked over at the sound of wingbeats. Iago had flown his way into the chasm, now carrying the Genie's lamp in his claws. "The lamp! We've gotta get the lamp!"

"What good will that do now?" Donald asked.

"Just trust me, you guys!"

"Says the guy who goaded Jafar into wishing for even more power— _Bwaa-a-a-k!"_ Donald had barely gotten out of the way in time as an enormous ball of magma went careening straight for him. Jafar had taken to throwing them around on the platforms, using his new magic to command the magma as if it were an extension of himself.

"Say, is it getting hot in here or is it just me?" A grating voice called out close by, and Sora looked up to see the parrot flying about, the lamp shining crimson in the light of the magma. She leapt, but the bird saw her at the last moment and flapped his wings for just enough height to stay out of reach.

Sora gave an angry scoff at that. She'd have to surprise him, she decided. But how?

"Ah- _Hoo-Hoo-o-o-ie!"_ Goofy's cry of pain forced her to look over, and she saw him running around in circles on the platform with the seat of his pants on fire.

"Hold on!" Sora shouted, lifting her keyblade and firing a quick frost spell at him to immediately put the flames out. At this, Goofy gave her a quick thanks, before raising his shield against the next fireball Jafar hurled.

Sora could see him begin to form another, one long coil of lava rising tentatively from the pool towards his outstretched arm. She raised her keyblade and cast another frost spell, noting with satisfaction how it immediately cooled to a blackened tendril before breaking apart into useless fragments. Jafar bellowed with rage.

"Say, that's pretty savvy!" The Genie exclaimed, and then snapped his fingers. Around the top of the room formed a thick grey cloud that immediately dulled the overwhelming heat somewhat, and snowflakes began to fall. The magma dimmed in color slightly as it began to cool.

"Genie, what are you doing?" Jafar interrogated, and the Genie shrugged.

"I'm just making snow cones over here, don't mind me!" He said as he snapped his fingers again and was now in a striped uniform consisting of a visor and apron, with a shaved ice machine and a little display cart immediately conjured up, before inspecting the pile of ice he had prepared and saying "You want one? I've got a yellow one right here with your name on it."

Jafar aimed the next fireball he made straight at the cart, wrecking it.

The Genie frowned. "It was _lemon_ flavored, don't be a party pooper."

Sora heard a squawk from close by, and saw it was the parrot again, circling back around. She could see Aladdin trying, and failing, to reach by jumping just as she had. Every time, the parrot would just dart out of reach.

"Finders keepers, loser's weepers!" He cawed, weaving in and out of Aladdin's reach. She could see his focus was split between Aladdin and Jafar, who was still throwing heaps of magma everywhere. Sora got an idea.

She summoned her keyblade—having dismissed it before to try and have her hands free to catch the parrot—and kept her eye on the lamp clutched in his claws. Sora thought of the shaved ice the Genie had made, the snowflakes still falling down. She concentrated enough to where she didn't feel the still-blistering heat from the magma, focusing on the thought of that blizzard Jafar had summoned earlier. She kept the parrot in her sights, aimed her keyblade, and fired off the spell.

It hit. With an angry caw, the parrot fell, its claws now encased in an ice block and too heavy to keep flying with. The lamp clattered to the ground with a metallic noise that was nearly impossible to hear against the roiling of magma and the sounds of the fight going on all around her. Sora quickly scooped it up, ignoring the indignant heckling of the parrot, and shoved it to Aladdin.

"Whatever you're going to do, do it now!" Sora directed him.

He took it and held the lamp out towards Jafar.

"Jafar!" Aladdin ordered, "Back to your lamp!"

Jafar immediately stilled, dropping the magma rock he had prepared back into the lava with a splatter. He slowly turned his head. "What did you say?"

"The one with the lamp calls the shots!" Aladdin called out, "Now back to your lamp!"

"No, no," Jafar muttered, as a vortex from the opening of the lamp started siphoning him back in. Great beams of light swirled around him, some of which solidified to form golden cuffs around his wrists, with the rest acting as ropes to draw him in faster. He screamed. " _No-o-o!"_

Jafar reached one great clawed hand at the parrot and pulled him in with him into the lamp by the tailfeathers, and the bird started shouting "I'm not a genie! I can't get trapped in there! No—!"

And with one last gust of wind, the last of Jafar and the parrot were trapped inside the lamp, and everything was over. They all stared at the lamp in shock.

The Genie was the first one to talk. He swept Aladdin in for a hug. "Al! That was amazing! All of you were amazing!" The Genie exclaimed as he stretched out one arm into absurd proportions and reached to wrap them all in a hug.

"Thanks, Genie," Aladdin replied with a slight wheeze before pushing away slightly. Finally the Genie let them go, his arms returning to normal length. "I told you guys I had an idea."

"Could've done without trying to deal with all that magma," Donald muttered irritatedly.

"Come on, Donald, you don't want to give anyone credit," Sora replied, and he squawked. But before they could start another round of bickering, the Genie turned to Aladdin.

"Say, Al, could you hold out that lamp real quick? Just for a second?"

"Sure," Aladdin replied with some confusion as he did so, "Why do you want it?"

With a snap of his fingers the Genie's apron and visor had transformed into a baseball uniform, replete with a baseball cap and cleats as his lower half turned into legs. A baseball bat appeared in his hand, and the Genie readied it as he closed one eye and focused solely on the outstretched lamp with the other. "Oh, you know," He said, "Just a sudden urge to play baseball, that's all."

"Hey, batter batter," The Genie cheered as he reared back the bat and struck the lamp, "Batter batter _swing!_ "

The lamp sailed far over their heads, over the platforms, and went straight into the lava. The magma closed around it, and the lamp was gone in the blink of an eye.

A movement from their side made the group's eyes turn towards it. It was a sheet of paper, fluttering down towards the platform. Goofy picked it up.

"Gawrsh, you guys, what's this?" He said as he began to lift it up so he could read it. But before he could a spectacular rumble was heard all around them.

"We gotta get out of here!" Sora declared.

"How?" Donald replied, "Where's that carpet?"

As if on cue, the group could hear a loud whistle from above. At the edge of the opening at the ceiling of the room they could see Abu's head poke out as he leaned over and waved a paw. Beside him was the magic lamp, waving a tassel.

Abu climbed onto the magic carpet, and it swooped down towards the platform to let them all on. Aladdin gave an exasperated noise.

"Is that why you guys were gone for that whole fight?" He huffed, as the pile of gold coins glittered red on the magic carpet from the lava still around them. "Wait, is that why the Cave of Wonders sounds like it's going to collapse?"

"Just get on! No time for talking!" Donald demanded, and they did so, coins tinkling as they took their seats.

"Don't leave yet," Aladdin said as the magic carpet began to try and duck out to go deeper into the magma cavern to another exit, "We still gotta get Jasmine!"

Abu gave him a confused look and started chittering something.

"Abu, what are you saying-?" Aladdin asked, and Abu started chittering more insistently. The magic carpet began to raise towards the stone room they fell through. "We still have to get her!"

At this, Abu gave an exasperated sigh and stomped his foot.

"What's he trying to say?" Donald asked, and did a double-take at the stone brick platform he stepped onto to see where Jasmine was. Or, was supposed to be.

Jasmine was gone.

"Jasmine?" Aladdin fearfully shouted as he stepped onto the platform, whipping his head around to look at every corner of the room. "Jasmine!"

A pulling feeling from the keyblade made Sora look up. _It's never done that before_ , she thought to herself. She glanced over and saw the keyhole on the wall from earlier, the barrier on it gone along with Jafar. Sora raised her keyblade towards it at once. Stars of Light gathered at the tip of her keyblade before a great beam shot out towards the keyhole with a trilling chime, and they could hear the keyhole lock with a final click.

The cavern rumbled again, and rocks began to fall from the ceiling.

"Aladdin! We need to go!" Donald said as the rest of the group made their way to the magic carpet, with the Genie floating alongside. Aladdin shook his head sternly.

"I'm not going without Jasmine!"

If they stayed here any longer, none of them would be able to get out. Sora thought to the disappearance of certain girls across the worlds, the sighting of Maleficent not even an hour prior. Jasmine was gone, Sora realized, and Maleficent must have taken her too.

She wasn't in Agrabah anymore.

"Aladdin!" Sora shouted, "Jasmine was taken to another world!"

"What do you mean?" Aladdin replied.

"I'll explain later!" She said, "We need to get out of here!"

With one last glance around the room, Aladdin climbed back onto the magic carpet, and they were off. Coins started to slide off in their wake with the speed they were going, making for a glittering trail back through the treasure room—where Donald didn't hesitate to grab a handful of gold coins this time as they zipped by—through the darkened corridors full with traps that still didn't go off as they sped through, and back out the mouth of the Cave of Wonders to the early evening air. The air was now blissfully cool against their skin after the scalding heat of the magma. Sora looked back to see the mouth of the cave closing up, and the tiger head disappearing under the sand. That was probably for the best, she reasoned.

She still wasn't sure what Kairi had meant by stopping Riku, but she wasn't sure if watching Maleficent disappear before their eyes counted as stopping her from anything. Not when she'd managed to get away with Jasmine anyway.

 _Sorry, Kairi._

"Hey," Sora said to Donald. He turned. "I won't say anything about you taking those coins as we left if you won't say anything about me wrecking the world order or whatever just now."

"Deal."

"Deal," She replied, before remembering the piece of paper from the lava room. "Hey, Goofy? What was that paper you got?"

"I almost forgot," He reached into his pocket and drew it out before handing it to her. "Ya wanna look at it?"

"Yes please," Sora said as she took it. "I was wondering what it could be— _Woah_."

"What is it? Let me look!" Donald leaned over to see, and Goofy did as well. They gave similar exclamations of surprise as they did so.

For at the top of the page it read:

 _ANSEM REPORT I_

 _By H.R.M. Ansem the Wise_

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

Chapter 1's sitting pretty at 21,943 words, whereas this chapter's word count is...22,196. This is officially the longest chapter yet!

So! 2 weeks to write it, mostly because things are beginning to tumble downhill from here. For everyone! These three kids are going to run the gauntlet of Things Going A Lot Worse Before They Get Better™, but everything's gonna turn out sorta okay in the end. You know how canon goes!

don't worry btw. Riku's day of reckoning will come...all 358/2 of them ヽ( ᐛ )ﾉ

That fight between Riku and Jasmine was really interesting to write, trying to be in two headspaces at the same time. I will say, though, that it felt weird to be in the headspace of a fifteen year old boy whose sense of empathy hasn't fully developed yet and is a little jerk who's gullibility and being distracted by his own experiences to see anyone else's clearly (you know how KH1 Riku is, he's a little turd). I'm not sure if I captured either of their perspectives super accurately in that scene. Nor am I sure if I balanced Jasmine's character from the movie properly (cuz in KH1 she basically has no personality whatsoever, let's be real) with her thoughts and feelings and experiences. Sooooo, if anyone wants to drop a comment (or two)(or three)(seriously I'm not picky) going into hardcore nitpick critique on that scene it would actually be the bee's knees if you could. Seriously. Tear me a new one, don't be afraid!

Notes:  
1\. It was super weird to write the Genie. I didn't expect that at all! In the movie so much of his character is the visual spectacles he puts on, with so much of what makes him memorable is the expressions and shticks Robin Williams gives him. I'm not sure I captured his 'essence', so to speak, but I tried. And I tried to work in that toaster at the end, I really did, but it didn't make any sense. I'm sorry :c

1a. I know the Genie in the movie has 4 fingers (and he's got 4 fingers in the manga and game, too) because he has the more classical cartoon anatomy compared to the human characters, but I wasn't sure if that was going to be a distracting detail (since I got a bunch of other symbolic details thrown in here) so I switched it to the regular five.

2\. Muslim stuff! In the movie they used 'Allah' as an exclamatory word, so I went ahead and threw some other middle-eastern stuff in here too since they seemed pertinent. From what I understand, Jahannam is like the muslim version of purgatory (muslims don't have a hell IIRC) where everything is fire. A dallah is basically an Arabic coffee pot that is used commonly in social rituals or special occasions! Also lunar mansions are the arabic version of constellations, with Syrma and Alrescha being two of them. If I'm wrong, please let me know

3\. Jafar's got like three transformations in the movie. He's a spicy magical girl. (◑ ᴥ ◑ )

4\. Bojack reference! Todd's 'It's you' monologue cuts right to the core of a lot of things that are wrong with a lot of people, so I thought it would be neat to work it in a tidbit.

5\. Honestly, a fight between a souped-up Jafar against Maleficent would be pretty rad to see. Too bad it didn't make its way into the story here, but I imagine it would be a lot like that fight between Dumbledore and Voldemort at the Ministry of Magic (which I desperately wish had lasted longer, it was awesome to see/read a good fight between two legendary wizards), except in this case it would basically be two Voldemorts against each other. Which would still be rad as hell tbh

6\. Don't worry, Rajah won't be a heartless forever (I'm changing KH2's agrabah story a bit)

7\. H.R.M. means 'His/Her royal majesty', which is usually a prefix for the king/queen (princes/princesses are referred to as 'highness')

8\. The scene where SDG first encounter Jasmine is interesting. Because it's worded vaguely as to who helped her-She says "I hope Aladdin's okay," which suggests it could be him (and the novel goes along with this idea), but the dialogue's super vague and could easily mean she's referring to someone else before she mentions Aladdin (and after she mentions him, tbh). So I kinda played with that a little bit and made it so that Riku helped her in the beginning instead!

9\. They also never explain why Jasmine's apologizing in the scene where Jafar puts her in that urn. Even the novel changes it to make it make sense! There, Jasmine's actually trying to run to Aladdin, but in the game she's just saying sorry (and in the manga the whole scenario's different). Sorry for what? I'm not sure, so I tried to come up with an explanation for it (since canonically Riku's the one who takes her to Hollow Bastion in the end, so I had to come up with an explanation for all of that too) (let's be real the writing in this game kinda sucks sometimes but I love it too much to care ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ )

Thank you for reading (´꒳`)


	9. Chapter 8: This Way Lies Ruin

**KAIRI**

Her sleep had come as inevitable as the night, and her waking as hoped for as the dawn.

There was quite a bit to think on, things that had been put off for longer than they should have. What Riku could be doing next, Maleficent's plans, that man in the hood. What he had said on the matters of Hearts. How Kairi, and the boy who slept still, could make their way out of this place. But the moment Kairi checked in on her body every thought in her head stilled.

There, in her room, stood Maleficent. Looking straight at Kairi.

Her countenance was no more ominous than usual—even in the brightest of moods Maleficent would probably still be petrifying, Kairi thought—but it was certainly more confusing than usual. She looked down at Kairi with a leisurely delight.

"It's quite amusing," Maleficent said, before going over to the window and idly watching the clouds go by, "That the girl with the keyblade found out about my plans for Agrabah early enough that she tried to interfere. And more amusing still that she thought she could even come close to stopping me at all."

She laughed. If Kairi did not know who Maleficent was, or was blind to what she and that Darkness of hers could be capable of, the sound would have reminded Kairi much of the laughter of some of the more scornful teachers back on the islands. It was a disdainful noise that made Kairi feel insignificant.

"If anything, she only helped me: Jafar was losing himself to his own Darkness, I could see it from the moment I met him. I didn't even have to get my own hands dirty when the time came." Maleficent continued watching out the window, and said, "I wonder if he screamed."

She said it the same way one would remark on afternoon plans, or the idea having a glass of wine with dinner. A mild interest in the banalities of life and living. Kairi would have shuddered if she could.

After having said that, Maleficent's gaze slowly turned displeased.

"The boy, if anything, did more to interfere than she did. My suspicions about Wonderland were right. He doesn't have it in him to take a world's Heart after all, he's too easily swayed. And to think he was so close this time too."

At that, Kairi could feel a small upswell of hope in her Heart. Riku's Heart still had a Light in it yet. It would struggle against the Dark all around it, just as it had surely struggled until now, but it had not gone out. Did he not take Jasmine, either?

It didn't change what Riku had already done, but it could change what he may do yet.

The din of her own thoughts, having grown excited at the revelation, hushed at the sight of Maleficent turning towards her. "But that still leaves the question of _how_ Sora learned of my plans in the first place. How did she know to go there, at that time?"

With a flick of her robes, Maleficent strolled back towards Kairi again, as if speaking to her personally and expecting an answer.

"I know for sure Riku had nothing to do with it. The others were busy with their own assignments. So that leaves you," Maleficent hissed as she bent closer.

She finished, "What sort of secrets could you be hiding?"

* * *

 **SORA**

"So then,after he decided to free the Genie for his last wish, Aladdin asked us to find Jasmine. I felt a little bad, cuz he wanted to come along with us to find her—"

"And he shouldn't have!" Donald interjected, "That would wreck the world order even worse than it already is."

" _Anyway,_ he asked us to do it instead, since he couldn't come because Donald's a stick in the mud. At least the Genie gave us a free toaster out of the whole deal. Bu-u-u-t," Sora said playfully as she pulled out the Ansem Report with a flourish, grinning wider at their looks of interest, "I'm not here to bog you guys down with the details. I'm here to show you this!"

"Is that...?" Yuffie gasped as she saw the title on the page, the vellum inscribed with an ink that didn't look faded despite its assumed age. Sora nodded, and Yuffie extended her hand without preamble, making grabbing motions. "Gimme."

The moment she had the page in her hand, the others crowded around her to read as well. Sora watched as Yuffie's eyes skimmed down the page, while Aerith and Leon were reading every line. Cid's expression clouded over the more he read.

"What's wrong, Cid?" Goofy asked. They all looked to Cid as he thought for a moment, his ever-present toothpick bobbing up and down.

He crossed his arms. "I remember when King Ansem first sent out the proclamation of a state of emergency in Radiant Garden. There were some naysayers at first, 'cause to some people the place was still the same paradise it always had been. 'Ol' Ansem's finally lost it', they'd say, 'We'd better call him Ansem the Foolish now.' They were the idiots, though, anyone with eyes could see these weird creatures popping up here and there at times."

"Heartless," Sora declared, and looked up in surprise at Cid shaking his head.

"Not quite. Or, eh, maybe they were," He amended as he shifted his stance to his other foot. "They were certainly just as dangerous as the heartless. Maybe even worse, since they were smart."

"What did they look like?" Yuffie asked.

"They didn't have those glowing yellow eyes the heartless have. These things had these squiggly, mean-looking eyes that glowed red. The heartless usually look a little clumsy, kinda bumbling," Sora begged to differ, judging by the sight of some of the heartless she'd seen, but she figured there was no way to compare to whatever Cid saw as she hadn't seen anything like what he was describing. He continued, "But these things were vicious. The most common kind I saw were these little black things with curved antlers and hands that bent towards a point like a claw. You could tell from a glance that they had some sort of wits about them: They walked a lot like people. With purpose. Once you saw one, you never forgot, those guys were unsettling." He finished as he gave an uncharacteristic shiver.

Leon frowned. "I don't remember ever seeing anything like that," He said.

"Yeah," Aerith agreed.

"You guys were young, maybe as young as Yuffie was before we left." Cid answered. "This was 'bout thirteen or fourteen years ago," He cursed under his breath, "Damn, I'm old. Anyways, sightings of them—and attacks, from what I heard—went on for about two-ish years here and there. It wasn't often that they appeared, I remember that."

"What happened to them?" Yuffie asked.

He shrugged. "They just kinda disappeared. Nobody knew where they went, or if they would come back. Certainly had to have shaken up King Ansem, since right after that he and those apprentices of his started trying to find out more about Darkness like he says he wants to do here." Cid said, tapping his finger on the last couple of lines in the report. Sora read them aloud.

"'Darkness of the Heart. How is it born? How does it come to affect us so? As ruler of this world, I must find the answers. I must find them before the world is lost to those taken by the Darkness.'"

"Too late for that," Yuffie remarked glumly. Leon gave a bitter scoff.

"Gawrsh, did he ever learn anything more about Darkness?" Goofy wondered.

"Who knows?" Cid replied, "That was way above my pay grade, I was just a mechanic at the time. I wasn't even working in the castle, though I did some jobs for people who did. That was how I knew when to leave."

"I just wish this one had some sort of hint for how to bring back my world, or find Kairi and my mom," Sora brooded.

"Or the king," Donald said, equally troubled.

At Donald's words, he, Sora, and Goofy shared a sigh. Sora looked up when she felt someone give her shoulder a squeeze. It was Aerith.

"Remember," Aerith assured, "This is just the first one you found. Who knows how many more are left?"

"Yeah," Sora acquiesced, "But it took us four worlds to find the first one. How many more could it take to find another?"

"As many as it takes!" Donald answered, attempting to rally some cheer for the three of them. It didn't seem to work much, so he tried again, his own voice a little more excited this time. "What if we tried that Halloween world next? The one we saw on the new gummi route listings? That could be fun."

"Hey, you're right," Sora replied as she brightened a little.

"Wait, wait," Yuffie spoke up, growing excited. "A whole world for Halloween? I gotta go too!"

"No way," Leon objected, "Yuffie, you're not the one on a quest to save the worlds, you're staying here."

"But it's so boring here now!" She whined, "No heartless? No newcomers? Sure, those are good things, but there's nothing left to do!"

"I'm sure we can come up with something," Leon said dryly.

Not long thereafter, the group made their leave from the Accessory Shop, and walked towards the front gates of Traverse Town. There weren't any less pedestrians around than when Sora had first arrived on that tumultuous day compared to now, but no more either, and it was this that cheered up the group considerably. Their work seemed endless, and it didn't feel as though they had made any significant strides forward until the procurement of that first Ansem Report, but looking around them reminded the trio of the true measurement of their efforts. The people.

"So, Halloween Town, huh?" Sora remarked, "How long's it gonna take to get there?"

"I think the autopilot estimated it around two days," Donald said.

She balked at that. "Two _days?_ Can't we just use the new warp drive thingy again?"

"Please don't," Goofy whimpered from their side.

"That's only for places you've already been to, ya ding-a-ling!" Donald said, "Besides, no frowning from either of you! Remember that _Highwind_ runs on happy faces."

* * *

 **RIKU**

The chapel of Hollow Bastion was a work of art in itself. Or, at least, it used to be.

Beyond the reach of vines and clawing thorns, scarcely lit by the beguiling waltz of the sconces' flames, there laid evidence of the former grandeur of Hollow Bastion if Riku looked closely. Faded imprints on the walls where paintings and tapestries had hung. Carved stone basins where water had glided down in great curtains. Speckles of colored glass along the edges of windows where vignettes of all who had come before shined down on you, by the light of a sun that knew dawn and dark.

But time takes the paintings, and larvae take the tapestries. Fountains run dry, and glass breaks. And all along, the vines shall take what is theirs with patience, and every pinprick of blood their thorns may yield.

The door closed behind Riku of its own accord as he walked in, just like last time. The sun left lazy smears down the walls of the chapel, temporarily blinding him whenever he walked in its path towards the round table. Riku tried to look past the stars in his eyes as he made his way to Maleficent and Hades, who were by now giving him looks of varying levels of reproach.

"Sheesh, kid, what took you so long?" Hades grumbled, his head today a low flickering blue tone. "Too busy shampooing your hair to see what time it was?"

Riku squinted hard at him. "You jealous or something? What happened to your hair, did you leave the curling iron in too long?" He crossed his arms and said, "It's a long walk to here from my room."

Hades matched his glare as his head then began to streak with reds, before turning back to Maleficent. "This one's got guts, I can say that much. More than any of _my_ guys, anyway."

"All quibbling aside," She began as a small smile curled at the edge of her lip, "There is a new development to report. Our associate Jafar is no more."

Well that was a surprise, Riku thought to himself. He had more power than Maleficent at one point, how did Jafar not even manage to get away from Sora and the rest of them?

Hades gave a low whistle. "Seriously? Did he ever manage to get that lamp he was drooling after?"

At her nod, he looked close to bewildered. "Then how the heck did he still lose?"

"The girl helped, but it was Jafar's own Darkness that paved the way to his demise," Maleficent answered. "He was consumed by his own hatred. And the more he reached for power, the more his Darkness festered."

Hades hmphed at that.

"If he had the lamp like you say, I'm sure that smarmy vizier could've had 'em—if _someone_ had stuck around to give him a hand," He suggested, giving a pointed glance to Riku.

"Hey, I did my part." Riku defended as he crossed his arms self-consciously, "I brought the princess, didn't I?"

"If you can call it that."

His hackles raised at Hades' remark and its accompanying eye-roll. "What was I supposed to do, tie her up? She didn't want to be around me, and I didn't really want to be around her either."

"The heartless were able to find her and bring her to me promptly regardless of her decision to roam the halls," Maleficent cut in before an argument could arise. Riku's Heart sank slightly. She glanced to Hades, and said, "One should beware of letting their Darkness burn too fiercely."

Hades recoiled at that. "Woah, woah, woah, lighten up," He chuckled nervously as he slicked a hand through the flames that wreathed his head. "I'm as cool as they come, okay?"

"Regardless, this meeting is adjourned," Maleficent said. "You are dismissed."

Hades left quickly, muttering under his breath and moving away from the table to summon a Dark portal, before walking through it and disappearing in an instant. Riku and Maleficent were alone in the chapel of Hollow Bastion, then. Not even Diablo was there to cast his eye on them.

Maleficent levitated the circular stone that made their meeting table back into the ground with a wave of her hand. Riku turned to walk out of the room and stopped after a couple of steps as Jafar's words from before came to mind.

" _Here's a much better plan: Why don't you put that supposed intelligence of his to work and actually explain the situation to that boy? Stop coddling him with delusions of 'balance', tell him of your plans with the princesses. Doing so may actually prove useful to your objective."_

And later on, he had mentioned something else.

" _She's a Princess of Heart. One of seven who somehow hold the key to opening the Door."_

"Hey, Maleficent?" He asked, turning around.

"Hmm?"

The question came close to never leaving his throat. Riku braced himself. If he didn't ask now, he might never work up the nerve otherwise.

"This whole thing with the worlds' Hearts and the princesses…Why are you doing this?"

"Haven't I already told you?" She chuckled, "Balance, my boy. Nigh identical to you."

Riku threw her a suspicious glance. "Really."

"Really."

He paused.

This didn't add up. Riku thought back to what she had said that very first day he had woken up in Hollow Bastion, alone and confused, holding fast to the promise the hooded man gave him that they would meet again.

" _Nothing is free, Riku. I know that man didn't help you for free, even if you think he did. Light, Dark, everything has a price. The only difference with me is that I shall not ask you for a pound of flesh. Instead, I'll merely ask you to work with me. That's all."_

He had powers of the Dark. He had a weapon. But she was helping him beyond that, with trying to get back Kairi's Heart. For seemingly nothing in return. Why?

 _Nothing is free, Riku._

"Why are you doing all this for me?" Riku asked. "What's the catch?"

"Catch? What's the catch?" Maleficent laughed, giving him what looked like a good-natured smile past her chuckles. "Silly boy, you're like a son to me. I only want you to be happy."

She reached to cup his face, and Riku flinched away, reaching up to push back her hand with more force than he intended.

" _What a pity. And just as we were getting so close to our reward, too."_

She had said that, and he would never forget it.

"I seriously doubt that."

Maleficent raised her chin slightly as her expression wavered for a split-second. For a moment, she looked suspicious. Then before he could blink it had hardened to something a little more sardonic.

"Believe what you wish. But lest we forget, I kept _my_ end of the bargain."

She knew.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

"I guess I don't have to worry about Maleficent coming in my room much anymore," Kairi joked weakly. "Since she doesn't want to risk having me overhear anything."

It was so quiet she could hear a pin drop in the white room. Part of her wished that she did have a pin to drop, if only to have something to hear other than herself.

She looked down. Those creatures that Cid had described, Kairi felt she might have encountered them before.

 _(strange creatures with strange gazes, who walked the earth with fury and walked the air with silk)_

She held her head and wrenched her eyes shut. An unspoken part of her forced her to stop, rumbling _No, no, don't wander here. This way lies ruin._

"I don't know what to do," She murmured. It was far from the first time she said those words to the boy on the pale throne. And it was far from the first time he didn't respond.

Perhaps one's question would be, she didn't know what to do about what? Did Kairi not know what to do about being stuck on this imaginary play island with its secret room, its once-comforting palms and sand now slowly beginning to become a cruel reminder? Or how she could only contact Sora through small bursts, and use nothing of her real body but her eyes and ears? Or, perhaps, that she was some sort of hostage in a poisoned world, where screaming memories tore past her eyes every time she slept, forgotten the moment she woke up?

In this case, the answer was D—all of the above. Everything. Kairi didn't know what to do about everything.

At least Riku seemed to be beginning to fix himself. Or, not getting any worse. That had to count for something.

With nothing else to do, Kairi flip-flopped back and forth between perspectives. There was the white room, her room in that place where Maleficent tread (once tread, now), and Sora's perspective. Kairi could see she was playing a lively game of go fish with Goofy.

White room, empty room, go fish. Go fish, white room, empty room. Empty room, white room, go fish. Go fish, white room…and not so empty room?

She watched as the doorknob slowly turned, and the door opened to reveal Riku. Kairi wondered if Maleficent had gone back on her own decision to not visit Kairi's body already, but as he closed the door behind him, she realized Riku had come alone. Of his own accord.

He sat down at the edge of the bed and looked around the room. She could see his head angling around as he looked at the crown trim.

"Thorns _and_ rosebud carvings, huh?" Riku remarked, his eyes still distractedly tracing the dips and rises of the motif. "Lucky you. There's just thorns along the wall in my room." He glanced back at her and his expression grew guilty. "Or, well, not lucky you, I guess. Since you're basically a coma patient or something right now. I'm sorry. I guess I was just trying to fill the empty space with words."

He dipped his head down, and Kairi could see he was gnawing at his lip past the tufts of silver hair that fell past his face. His Dark wavered.

"Maleficent's lying to me," Riku said finally. "I know she is."

 _Dang, Riku,_ she thought, _anyone with eyes could see that._

If she could, Kairi would have slapped a palm to her face. She loved her friends, she really did. But they could be so _dumb_ sometimes.

He continued, "All of this—rounding up the Princesses of Heart, spreading the heartless, touching the worlds' Hearts with Darkness—all of this was supposed to be for the greater good. For balance between Light and Darkness. I thought that's what all of this was for."

Kairi didn't really know what to think about that, beyond that he was wrong. He was so wrong. It wasn't the Dark that needed saving right now, it was the Light. But there was no way for her to tell him so.

"That's what all this is for to me, anyway. Maleficent…uh. Not so much, apparently."

He went on, "When I went to Agrabah, Jafar spouted off some stuff. About the princesses and how if you got them all together some Door would open. I didn't know any more beyond that much, he was remarkably tight-lipped about it despite going on monologues exactly like some villain in a kid's movie."

A Door?

Riku's voice went low as he kept an eye on the door to Kairi's room as he continued to talk. "When he alluded to it earlier in the trip, Maleficent just gave him this…this _look_ , like she was about to set him on fire with her eyes. He shut up right then, but later he went on about it to her, they thought I wasn't there to hear. Apparently Maleficent's got plans for some Heart behind the Door, she called it a 'reward'. The Princesses of Heart have something to do with it. I don't know. The conversation ended pretty quickly after that."

Kairi's head was nearly spinning with this information. She was filing it away to puzzle over later as fast as she could, already trying to turn it this way and that in her head to figure out what this Door and reward could be.

"'Reward'," He snapped. "She's just in this for a payday. She roped me into all of this just for herself and her cronies to be selfish. What was she going to do with me after we got it? Just give me a pat on the head and say 'good boy' like I'm a dog? 'Good job on saving the worlds, I wasn't actually trying to be the good guy you thought I was, thanks for doing all the work.' I thought—" Riku's breath caught slightly at this. "I thought she liked me. I thought she cared."

His Dark spread over his Heart just a little more at this. Kairi filed that fact away in her head too.

Riku bit out an unidentifiable sound that came close to laughter, but not quite. "Whatever. Maybe I'll strike out on my own. If Maleficent's not actually interested in trying to fix things, or help people, then that's her deal I guess. I'm not going to let that stop me from doing what's right."

"I'm not even sure if she's still intending to help you with your whole coma thing," He said as he glanced away from the door back to Kairi. He went quiet for a moment as his expression went sad.

"If she doesn't, I will. I'll help you get your Heart back. I promise. It's just…I don't know what to do."

 _Welcome to the club, Riku._

"Because you didn't lose your Heart to the Darkness, that would make a heartless. You lost it to the Light. But then where would a Heart go when _that_ happens? It's crazy, apparently anything can have a Heart. Even," At this, he seemed to lose his breath a bit as he looked into space towards nothing. Riku's eyes widened considerably.

"Even inanimate objects," He breathed.

Before Kairi could wonder what on earth he could be thinking now, what he could be planning, Riku stood suddenly from the bed. His hands moved in halfway gestures as if he were acting out a thought. His eyes darted from point to point, never lingering at anything for long, his brows furrowed in inspiration.

Finally, he seemed to remember he was still talking to Kairi. Riku turned to her suddenly, and said, "I think I have an idea on how to get your Heart back. Or, uh, at least a way to find out more about what happened. I gotta go. I'll be back later, okay?"

At this, Riku turned and nearly ran out of the room, and closed the door behind him with a clatter.

* * *

 **SORA**

"Ya got any aces?"

Sora pulled her mouth to the side in a sulking expression as she yanked out the three aces she had in her hand and passed them to Goofy, who chuckled. On the dashboard, Jiminy struggled to keep a hold on his deck of cards, which were much too large for his tiny hands.

"Seriously, how are you so good at this game?" She asked. For the past day they've been on the road, Goofy had won almost every game, and came close to winning the ones he didn't.

"Before Maxie started lessons to join the royal guard like his old man, we'd play all the time," Goofy beamed. "He's better than me at it now, ahyuk!"

She looked up. It was easy to forget that the clumsy, bumbling, and aptly-named Goofy that sat in the cockpit with them was actually the captain of the royal guard. It was easy enough to remember Donald was the designated magician of the court, as he reminded them of that fact with every spark of electricity that flew off his staff at a moment's notice, contrasting with Goofy's pacifist nature and refusal to ever use any weapons beyond his shield.

"Uh, guys?" Donald spoke up from the pilot's chair, where he'd had his eyes glued to the expanse of space outside the gummi ship since they'd left Traverse Town. "What is that?"

All three looked over to see a patch of the sky where there were no stars, and it was growing bigger as Sora watched. Her Heart went to her feet.

"I thought we fixed the problem of stars going out," She mumbled faintly. Jiminy shook his head.

"Look again!"

She rubbed her eyes and strained to see something beyond the black carpet of outer space, and realized the stars were gone not because they had gone out, but because they had been covered up by something else. Something huge.

A whale, perhaps the biggest she'd ever seen. Larger than worlds.

And it was getting closer.

The group heard a baying call, then, loud enough to make the walls of the gummi ship rattle ominously as the whale swooped up and over them, just barely missing collision. Sora unbuckled her seat belt and ran towards the window, completely ignoring Donald's increasingly louder demands that she return to her seat. She saw the whale's tail angle up and down as its path bent back downward as the whale circled back around in an unfathomably enormous arc. It called again.

"It's Monstro," Jiminy said in a far-off voice. She jerked her head back to see he was as astounded by the sight of the whale as she was, if not more so.

"Monstro?" Sora repeated uncertainly.

"A whale of a whale, and vicious besides," He informed, his voice slowly returning to normal as he blinked away his surprise. "I'm surprised he made it off my world, I wonder if anyone else got out okay too, then?"

"That's from _your world?!_ " Donald gaped at Jiminy, before quickly turning back to Sora. "For the last time, you have about two seconds to get back in your seat and buckle in before I get us out of here!"

"Too late! He's going to swallow us!" She gestured wildly towards the front window.

They followed her hand to see the whale had by now angled himself directly in their path and opened his mouth wide, and with another great swish of his tail Monstro had surged forth, heading straight for the gummi ship. The group screamed.

The lights flickered out in the gummi ship, strobing for a second longer before going dark, and the last thing Sora saw was Monstro's teeth closing shut as _Highwind_ entered the mouth. The gummi ship hit hard against something with a dull smacking sound, an unlikely noise considering the ship was made of metal, and Sora was swept off her feet when the gummi ship gave a sickening roll inside of Monstro's mouth.

The last thing she felt was a crack as her head hit the dashboard, and all went black.

* * *

 **RIKU**

He winced as he felt his shoe step into something squishy.

 _Just convince Pinocchio to come with you and get out,_ Riku reassured himself. No need to stay longer than absolutely possible.

 _It took some doing to find Maleficent, but a friend was willing to show him the way._

 _After Riku had closed the door to Kairi's room and raced to the chapel hoping to still find Maleficent there, he was quickly disappointed. The table was long since receded back into the floor, and the sun's streaks still trailed down the walls, but nobody lay beyond them. He walked out the halls and opened the first door he saw, and Riku found himself somewhere along the outer walls of Hollow Bastion._

 _He squinted against the full force of the dying sun, still bright despite its perpetual set, and he looked over to see a small heartless staring at it, with black crooked antennae quivering in odd intervals. Riku couldn't explain how, but he knew this was the heartless that still woke him up every day by poking him in the nose repeatedly. He couldn't help but smile at the humanizing sight of the little heartless watching the sunset. Not for the first time, Riku wondered who this heartless was before being transformed into its current state. But then he remembered his goal._

" _Do you know where Maleficent is?" It looked over at him, antennae still dancing. "I'm pretty sure you can sense her at least a little bit, can you take me to her?"_

 _It twitched its head, almost as if trying to imitate a nod. And with that, Riku was on the chase. It dashed around hallways, past doors, down several floors, until it came to a stop in the library and vanished into a Dark portal._

 _The library. Riku had been here a number of times in the beginning, less so as his tasks required more attention. Few of the tomes made much sense, as they seemed to be centered around increasingly perplexing research subjects he couldn't begin to understand. But at times, they had mentioned Light and Darkness. He was curious as to what they discussed._

 _But that was a question for another day. Right now, he spied Maleficent at one of the desks, papers scattered about her in small organized piles. She looked up as he walked over._

" _Was there something you needed, my child?"_

 _Diablo was back, he saw, and now perched on the neck of a lamp at the desk instead of his usual spot on her shoulder. The bird studied him with black eyes that seemed to swallow any light in the room._

" _I was wondering," Riku started, "Do you remember Pinocchio? From that day in Traverse Town?"_

" _Of course."_

" _I was thinking about Kairi missing her Heart, and how Pinocchio has one, even though he's a puppet. An object. And what he said about the Blue Fairy giving him a Heart, and what you said about not being able to make him a real person because you didn't know what this fairy's magic was like?" At her nod, he continued, "Do you think you'd be able to study her magic more and figure out a way to replicate it if I brought him here?"_

 _Maleficent looked intrigued at this. "Perhaps. What are you thinking?"_

" _I was thinking maybe you could make a new Heart for Kairi, or one just like her old one."_

 _He looked over at the sound of a warbling cry from Diablo. That same sound that was just like laughter. Riku glanced back at Maleficent to see a spark of amusement just barely around the corners of her lips, her eyes. There but not quite._

" _I shall not lie, I was thinking similarly when I first saw him. 'Tis why I had you bring him to me, so that I could study him for a moment. I'm sure I could find out something useful to your theory if I could study the Blue Fairy's magic at work for longer."_

 _He bit his cheek to keep his gratification from showing on his face. If Maleficent were going to use him, he decided, Riku could use her right back. For a nobler purpose than some 'reward'. Two could play at this game._

" _Great. In that case, can you figure out where he is now?"_

When she said Pinocchio was 'in the belly of the beast', he thought she was speaking poetically, like he was in a dangerous situation. Riku didn't think she was being _literal_.

His stomach churned as he could feel the ground beneath him pulse. Riku looked around at the room the Dark portal had opened into and saw that almost everything was made of flesh—the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Contrary to the pink or red color one would expect, the inside of Monstro was instead composed of indigo and purple tones, with an array of other colors speckling the walls in an irregular pattern that pulsed along with the ground. The overall effect was unsettling, but not morbidly so: Somehow the anatomy of Monstro had managed to remain cartoonish rather than realistic. Like a child's idea of what the inside of a whale would look like.

Around him in the room, Riku could see barrels and crates stacked in the corners. And somewhere around the edge of the room down below, he could hear rustling.

He looked down towards the first story of the chamber. Below, he could spy a familiar wooden figure clacking about on the floor, peering about as if looking for something. Perfect.

"You ever find who you were looking for?" Riku called out to him, and Pinocchio looked up with a grin spread over his carved features. "Your father, I think it was?"

"Mister, you're back!" He cheered, and Riku went through another Dark portal that took him down to Pinocchio's level. "I sure did, the star worked! Turns out my father had ended up here after Monstro swallowed his raft he had built to try and find me, he didn't realize I ended up in a whole other town!"

"A raft, huh?" He mused, thinking back to the raft he and Sora and Kairi had built just before the islands fell. Riku wondered where it had ended up, if somewhere out there in space there was _Highwind_ drifting past the stars. "So, what are you working on now?"

"I'm looking for more gummi blocks to help father build a ship! We might be able to get out of this whale for good, then."

"Gummi blocks," He echoed. Maleficent had showed him those, not long after they'd given Pinocchio the star shard. She mentioned the research done on them by a man named Ansem, how they could be used to traverse worlds. Riku personally preferred the Dark portals for their convenience, himself. "You still have that star shard, right?"

"Sure do!" Pinocchio said as he gestured to one of his pockets, which glowed green. "Hope you don't mind, I showed it to my father right after I arrived. He used it to research the gummi blocks, and that's how he found out we could use them to escape. Haven't shown anyone else, though."

"That's fine," Riku replied. It couldn't matter much if he were going to bring Pinocchio back to Maleficent soon enough anyway.

Before long, without even realizing it, Riku had gotten wrapped up in helping Pinocchio find pieces of gummi blocks, and then in a small game of tag. In a way, he shamefully thought as he remembered his intentions to take Pinocchio to try and find a way to help Kairi, this was nice. Just trying to round up some material and play games in the meantime, like those couple of months back on Destiny Islands where the only objective was to finish the school year and make a raft.

Back when things were so simple. Before there were heartless, or keyblades, or Light and Dark. When all he had to think about was what to do tomorrow, and what could be waiting beyond the waves of Destiny Islands.

Before long they had amassed a number of small shards of gummi blocks, and they heard a far-off voice call for Pinocchio.

"Oh, gosh, I should go see what Father needs," He said, cupping the gummi pieces in his gloved hands. And then, he turned to Riku. "You're still gonna stick around, right? We can play hide and seek next!"

 _Why am I doing this?_ He thought, _I could just drag him in a Dark portal right now and be done with it. Kairi's waiting for me anyways._

But, Riku supposed, he didn't mind this so much for the moment. The feeling like things were normal even if just for a short time.

"You know what? Yeah," He replied. "Yeah, I'll stay."

* * *

 **KAIRI**

"He's probably going to go do something stupid, isn't he?" She asked the boy in the chair.

"At least he's got the idea that maybe Maleficent isn't one of the good guys, finally. Still, if he says she's trying to use the Princesses of Heart to gain access to another Heart behind this Door…"

"And _I'm_ one of those Princesses of Heart," She glanced down at her hands. Kairi could feel her Heart squeeze.

"Maybe I shouldn't get out of this place and back in my body after all."

She could feel pinpricks around her eyelids, and Kairi quickly brought her hands to her face before she felt her cheeks getting wet. She pressed her fingers to her eyes with enough force to start seeing abstract shapes spangle across the backs of her eyelids. Kairi's attempts to hold the tears in didn't stop them from finding their way out. She raggedly sighed.

"Maybe I'll be stuck here forever," Kairi said with a short trilling laughter that was quite different from how it usually sounded. "I'll be just like one of those princesses in the storybooks, stuck in an ivory tower, except I'll be here in this white room stuck on this—this fake play island—"

"And that's supposed to be the _good_ ending," She sniffed. Kairi gave a small sputtering laugh again. "Kairi never gets her body back and she's stuck here for all eternity, and everyone else lives because Maleficent and that guy in the hood and whoever else can't access that Door."

"Bad ending," Kairi said in a rasp, "Kairi gets her body back and she and everyone else in the universe dies or worse."

Black spots flashed at the edge of her sight. She distantly realized she couldn't take as deep of breaths as she desperately wanted to.

Kairi stood unevenly and took wobbling steps towards the open door of the white room, with her knees threatening to go out from under her at any second. She had to get out of here. She had to get out of here. The walls were too white, the light too much. She felt like she was going blind in a room that was shrinking to the size of a coffin.

"I-I'm sorry," She gasped as she clawed at the archway and spared a glance back at the boy. His face was still so peaceful, placid, as if he weren't aware of anything at all. For a moment Kairi hated him more than anything. "I gotta get out of here, I gotta—"

She didn't finish her sentence as she ran blindly out of the white room, her shoulders smacking against the rock walls of the cave. It was as much of a trek to run in the sand in this fake play island as it was in real life, the grains halfway pulling at her shoes. And just as in real life, the overgrowth of plants at the entrance to the cave thwacked painfully against her as she barged out.

Kairi hated how real this place was in every way but the ways that mattered. She hated how a place for childhood fun had become a prison. She hated how Sora and Riku were able to use their own bodies and do something as simple as walk around without it meaning the potential destruction of everyone and everything. She hated how the boy in the pale throne was able to sleep through his own imprisonment so peacefully. She hated this. She hated everything.

Kairi collapsed against the sand just as she did on that first day when she realized she couldn't use her arms or legs. When she reverted back to this fake play island as a reflex of fear, because being able to do something imaginary was better than being able to do nothing at all but be a lifeless doll on the outside. She breathed so deeply she risked inhaling sand.

Kairi rolled over onto her back and dug her fingers into the sand, watching it fall steadily through her fingers. Another scoop, and she did it again. And again. Kairi listened to the din of the waves crashing offshore.

She angled her head upward awkwardly to look back at the thicket of plant growth that marked the entrance to the cave. She remembered when Sora and Riku had first shown the place to her, two years after she had arrived on the islands.

 _That day at school, Sora was antsier than usual. Which was saying something, considering how even on a normal day she'd nearly squirm out of her seat several times before the day was out. Every time Kairi asked her what was up, Sora would only say "It's a surprise, I can't tell you yet," or a variation thereof._

 _That afternoon, Riku met up with them as they walked home, which wasn't unusual. He was still in the same school as them, even if a grade above, and so they met up whenever they could. Compared to Sora nearly vibrating out of her shoes, his stride was as even as it often was. Neither of them would give Kairi a definitive answer whenever she asked what was going on._

 _They still wouldn't answer her questions as they both walked right past the entrances to their neighborhoods, straight to the harbor. Past the dockhands and boating staffs, to the private piers for resident families to keep their own boats at. Riku gestured for them to get in his little personal boat he sailed to the play island with, made with help by Kairi's dad once Mina had dubbed Riku and Sora as officially being old enough to go to the play island by themselves. It had happened six months before, but he was still quite proud of the fact, and took Sora and Kairi to the play island nearly every weekend since._

" _Geez, Sora, stop rocking the boat so I can get in."_

 _At his words, she held her knees close to try and stop her fidgeting. "I can't help it!" Sora protested, as Kairi could see the toes of her shoes wobbling despite Sora's attempts to stay still. "I'm so excited. It's the coolest place ever, and it's ours, and we're gonna show you," She added to Kairi._

" _Why can't you guys just tell me?" Kairi asked. They both grinned at her._

" _You'll see," They said in unison._

 _They had scarcely spent any time mooring the boat ashore before Sora tugged on Kairi's arm, nearly dragging her up the scaffolding and past the waterfall. Riku followed close behind._

 _As short as they still were, they didn't need to crouch down much at all to walk under the flora that marked the entrance. Only Riku had to angle his head slightly to avoid a branch._

 _The first thing Kairi noticed about the cave was that it was dark. And from beyond, she could hear the roar of the wind from deeper within the cave._

" _What is this place?" She asked._

 _Sora started hopping up and down, and nearly shouted "Me and Riku discovered this place only a couple of days after we first found you! You're one of us now, so we wanted to show it to you."_

" _You gotta keep this place a secret, okay?" Riku insisted. Kairi nodded._

" _What's it called?"_

 _Sora and Riku glanced at each other and gave mirrored shrugs. It was uncanny how in-sync they could be at times, Kairi thought to herself._

" _We never really had a name for it," Sora said, "We've only ever called it the secret place."_

* * *

 **SORA**

" _I'm_ serious, _Riku!" She pouted as she stamped her foot on the scaffolding, "There's a monster in there!"_

" _Uh huh."_

" _It's true, I saw it with my own eyes!"_

" _Sure," He drawled, and gave her an unimpressed look. His silver hair looked almost bluish as they walked in the shade, and it reflected the color of the sky slightly. "Are you sure you didn't just hear it this time?"_

 _She made a frustrated noise. "What difference does it make? There's a huge monster in there, I'm telling you!"_

" _Alright," Riku sighed as they walked closer towards the bushes towards one side of the waterfall, "Suppose there really is a monster. Think we can beat it by ourselves, Sora?"_

 _She gave him a wink as she raised her wooden sword and gestured with it to his, clutched in his hand._

" _No problem. We can do anything when we're together!"_

 _Sora whipped her head towards the bushes as she heard another growling rumble._

" _Listen! There! Did you hear that? Please tell me you heard it too," She nearly begged as he leaned forward, his brow furrowing as he tried to listen._

" _Ssh. Quiet," He ordered as he gripped his wooden sword with both hands. "We've gotta be careful."_

 _Just beyond the copse of shrubbery, the children could see a long dark passageway stretch out in between the leaves. They tiptoed inside, the bottommost leaves grazing past the tops of their heads._

 _They walked forward, and no monster. Farther in, and still none. Another rumbling roar called out, and Sora grabbed Riku's arm. She could see his knuckles turn white as he gripped the wooden sword tighter. The only sound the children made was the quiet tinkling noise from the necklace Sora wore._

 _Down the stone corridor, past the beginnings of tree roots trailing down the tops of the walls, and their path ended at the arrival to a larger chamber the corridor fed into. They blinked at the newfound light source in the ceiling of the chamber after the darkness of the walk in. A hole in the stony construction of the cave turned out to be the source of the roar, from the wind skirting past the opening. Riku pointed at it._

" _See that?" He chuckled, as Sora slowly let go of his arm. "It was just the wind making that noise."_

" _Aw, man," She whined as she crossed her arms behind her head, a pose she had seen Riku do not long ago earlier and had imitated ever since. "I wish it was a monster!"_

" _A second ago you were spooked at the idea of it being a real monster," He pointed out._

" _No, I wasn't!"_

" _You were gripping my arm."_

 _She floundered, trying to come up with a good excuse. "I was…I just didn't want to lose you, that's all! It's a really big dark cave and we could have gotten lost."_

 _(Riku looks at her and thinks for half a moment of continuing to tease her, in the good-natured jest of lifelong friends. But a flash of blue catches his eye and he looks down, slightly, seeing the necklace mirroring the endless blue of the sky. And Riku remembers his promise to protect her from the dark, too, from the night of the meteor shower two days prior.)_

 _(He decides not to tease her about her fear of the dark today.)_

 _Sora turned to look at something just beyond them both, past the hole in the ceiling. "What's that over there?"_

 _Riku turned, too, and saw a large wooden_ something _at the end of the room. Finely carved and decorated with gilded trimmings. He walked towards it and felt the edges of it._

 _(It whispers to him, words too quiet for his mind to recognize, but just loudly enough for his bones to understand.)_

" _A window, or maybe a door?" He wondered, and saw there were no hinges or doorknob. "It won't open."_

 _She quirked her mouth to the side. "Geez, is that really all that's in here?"_

" _What do you expect in a boring place like this?" He paused. "Hey, Sora."_

" _Hm?"_

" _When we grow up, let's get off this island."_

 _She turned to Riku and saw that he had an unusually earnest look on his face. He took her hand in his and raised his wooden sword in the other, and Sora could see the scratches and dents that had begun to accumulate on it glow in jagged crescents as they caught the light from the hole in the ceiling where the sky shined through._

" _We'll go on real adventures," Riku avowed, "Not this kid stuff!"_

Sora came to on a soft, spongy surface.

She blinked, and saw the gummi ship bobbing up and down on the surface of what looked like a great pond with piles of wooden constructs towering around in it. It mercifully seemed undamaged despite what had to be a crash landing into Monstro's mouth. She realized the ground she had been sprawled out on was…moist?

"What the— _ew!_ " Sora scrambled to get off the ground and yanked the sleeve of her overshirt to clean off her face, her legs. Was this place made of _flesh?_

Oh, right.

They were inside a whale.

The chamber echoed with distant rumbling, and the staccato of footfalls as Donald tapped his foot. He was looking upwards at something, as was Goofy, who had his shield raised to halfway cover his head as he tried to peek around it.

"Knock it off!" Donald yelled, his voice making the words come out almost with a scraping sound.

Goofy glanced back at Sora as she walked up to see whatever they were watching for. "Hey, Sora. Are you okay? Ya took a nasty hit there as we landed."

"Yeah, I'm fine," She replied as she felt her pockets for a potion or an elixir. Better to be safe than sorry. Sora decided not to mention the flashback dream she'd had. "What are you guys doing?"

She took a quick step back as something bright and colorful sailed through the air and landed at her feet. Sora could hear rustling from above.

"Tryin' to avoid those things, ahyuk!" He answered and gave a start when his shield rang as another object clattered against it. "And for today's weather expect showers. Heavy showers!" Goofy gulped.

"Hey! Who's there?" Donald shouted.

Suddenly a clacking noise sounded out, and Sora could see a carved wooden face peek over the edge of the wooden scaffolding.

"It's me!" The boy—a puppet, Sora realized—said.

"Well, as I live and breathe!" Jiminy exclaimed, and Sora saw he had climbed up onto Donald's shoulder. "If it isn't Pinocchio!"

"Jiminy!" Pinocchio cheered, as Jiminy opened his tiny umbrella and was carried to the wooden scaffolding above by a sudden breeze. Pinocchio carefully caught him in an outstretched hand. "I've been looking all over for you."

"And I've been looking for you," Jiminy replied, "I was so worried. I didn't think you'd end up in Monstro again! How did you get here?"

Pinocchio's eyes darted about at this. "I dunno, I just kinda woke up here."

Right before their eyes, Pinocchio's nose grew by quite a few inches. Jiminy frowned.

"You know, Pinocchio, you're not supposed to tell lies," He lectured, and looked down towards a glowing green light from Pinocchio's pocket. "And what's that?"

"I'm not lying," He protested, and his nose grew long enough to start sprouting leaves. "And it's nothing!"

Now Pinocchio's nose was long enough that the leaves gave way to budding flowers.

"Pinocchio," Jiminy warned.

His eyes fell. "I'm not supposed to tell anyone," Pinocchio said weakly. Jiminy's expression softened at this, and he rested a hand on the tip of Pinocchio's nose consolingly.

"The Blue Fairy asked me to watch out for you, Pinoke," He encouraged him. "So you wouldn't stray from your path to become a real boy. I'm your conscience, remember?"

"I remember," Pinocchio replied with a small smile, and pointed to his overgrown nose. "'A lie only grows and grows—"

"—'Til you get caught, plain as the nose on your face." Jiminy finished. "Whatever it is, you can trust us. Right, guys?"

"Right!" Goofy nodded. From beside him, Sora and Donald did the same.

Pinocchio hesitated for a moment more, and finally relented. He placed Jiminy in the brim of his hat and climbed down the side of the scaffolding, and the trio could see the glowing much more clearly now. Finally, as he reached the floor, Pinocchio reached into his pocket and pulled out a star-shaped rock that pulsed with that green light.

Donald gasped. "Is that what I think it is?!"

"A star shard!" Goofy cried. "Gawrsh, I've only ever read about those!"

"What's a star shard?" Sora asked. Donald didn't dare peel his eyes away from the rock as he answered.

"It's one of the rarest types of gummi blocks in existence," He said, "Able to transport the holder to nearly anywhere! The only one I've ever seen was owned by the king. The king!" Donald angrily remembered, and nearly shot daggers at Pinocchio from his eyes. "How did you get that star shard?!"

"It was a present!"

"Liar!"

Jiminy was looking aghast at the proceedings thus far, and finally intervened.

"Now, now," Jiminy opened his umbrella and quickly got in the middle of the two, which was no mean feat considering his stature. "I don't think he's lying, his nose didn't grow! Now, Pinocchio," He asked gravely, turning to the wooden boy, "Tell us how you got this star shard."

"It really was a present, I swear!" He cried, "I was telling this Miss and Mister I met in Traverse Town about how I wanted to be a real boy, and how I wanted to see you and Father again! She said she couldn't make me real, but she could help me find my father. That's when she gave me this," Pinocchio gestured to the star shard in his hand. Donald squinted at it fiercely. "Miss told me to keep it secret, 'cuz somebody might try and take it or else."

They all took a while to process this information.

"That's quite the present," Goofy spoke.

"I still think the story's fake." Donald muttered angrily.

"Donald, he wasn't lying," Sora replied, "Like Jiminy said, his nose didn't grow. Besides, King Mickey's star shard can't be the only one in existence, right? Maybe there was someone out there that had one and was just really generous," She finished a little unsurely, the story still sounding a little far-fetched to her. Oh well, Sora thought, it's gotta be true if his nose didn't change at all.

"That's what I thought!" Pinocchio said, "It was a real kind favor of them. But if you want something, why not take it?"

"My goodness," Jiminy shook his head, "Maybe you could do with some more advice from your conscience, then."

"You are my conscience, Jiminy!" Pinocchio smiled, and picked Jiminy back up to put him on his shoulder. "I'll never tell lies as long as you're around to guide me."

With this, Pinocchio's nose glowed, and reverted back to its original size. The small budding flowers fell off and drifted to the floor. Jiminy sighed gratefully. From deeper into Monstro's mouth, the group could hear someone calling out.

"Pinocchio! Pinocchio!" They shouted, "Are you alright? I heard a commotion!"

"I'm alright, father!" He replied, "I'm coming back!"

Pinocchio safely deposited Jiminy back into the brim of his hat, and climbed up the wooden scaffolding, his hinged joints clicking as he went. He was one of those marionette puppets, Sora realized, but he could walk and talk like a person.

They followed him up the scaffolding, and Sora looked around as they walked over the watery area that made up Monstro's mouth. Along the front and sides were vast teeth clenched together, with some sort of bony construct that looked like a spine branching out far over their heads. Piles of wooden pieces were scattered all about the area. Sora could see they were walking up on a half-wrecked ship towards the back of the room, where an elderly man stood waiting. Visible beside him was a mostly-completed gummi ship.

"Were you searching for more gummi blocks, Pinocchio?" The man asked and saw the rest of the group walking up onto the ship beside the boy. "My, so the whale swallowed all of you, too? My goodness."

"Sure did," Goofy confirmed.

"Oh dear, where are my manners?" He tutted, as Pinocchio went to his side. "My name is Geppetto. I'm Pinocchio's father."

After they had introduced themselves, Sora asked, "So it looks like you have a gummi ship here, huh?"

"That's right, father!" Pinocchio remembered as he put Jiminy down onto Donald's shoulder gently, "They have a gummi ship, too!"

"Do you, now?" Geppetto asked as he readjusted his glasses. "I've been working on trying to construct this one with my boy's help, so we can get out of here. Monstro has a habit of taking in quite a few gummi blocks as he wanders around, and I discovered they can be used to make some extraordinary machines!"

"How did you discover that?" Donald asked.

"With Pinocchio's help! That star-shaped gummi block of his gave me quite a fright as he landed right here in Monstro with a great burst of light not too long ago, and it's helped us discover all sorts of uses for it and other gummi blocks. That's why I'm making the ship, because it seems to me the star shard's a little unstable when you use it without other gummi blocks to help control it."

"Sure is," Goofy chuckled, "King Mickey had a heck of a time trying to control his star shard when he first got it. He'd go blasting off in the middle of a sentence!"

"Same thing with Pinocchio," Geppetto replied, "About a day after he first arrived, he disappeared again in another burst of light! I was terrified, thinking I'd lost my boy again, but then he reappeared a moment later when the cuckoo clock went off." He went over to the stack of gummi blocks beside the incomplete ship and picked one up. "Well, we've all had quite a journey. I don't suppose you'd be interested in joining us for supper? I'm sure Pinocchio wou—Pinocchio?" He looked around hurriedly and searched out over the piles of wooden scaffolding over the rest of Monstro's mouth. "Oh, dear, he's been running off a lot today."

"He's gotta be close by," Sora reassured him, looking over the foremost railing of the deck. "There he is!"

Pinocchio was darting off farther into the anatomy of Monstro and going quickly. He didn't stop or slow down for any of them calling his name.

"Don't worry, we'll go see what's up, sir," Sora said before jumping off over the railing, feeling her feet sink slightly into the fleshy ground. She couldn't stifle a slight cringe of disgust at the feeling of the ground yielding slightly. Sora continued on towards the dark archway that she saw Pinocchio disappear into and could hear Donald and Goofy following behind not long after.

Sora's disgust unexpectedly lessened slightly at the sight of the next chamber she had found herself in: A cartoonish-looking room that was purple-colored, with bright abstract patterns on the walls that quaked in time with the distant rumbling of this place. She realized each of the patterns had their own pulse that they followed. The room was lit by the entrances to other parts of Monstro, which glowed with a color-changing light. By the entrance to the far end of the room the trio could see Pinocchio peeking around the corner with an innocent smile.

"What are you doing?" She asked him, "Let's go back."

Next to speak was Goofy. "Y'know, Geppetto's awfully worried about you."

Pinocchio looked slightly guilty at this, but he shook his head.

She sighed. "Pinocchio, come on, stop fooling around playing games."

Her Heart skipped a beat at the sound of Riku's voice.

"But Sora," He said, "I thought you _liked_ games."

* * *

 **RIKU**

Yeah, he figured, it was probably a really dumb idea to try and rile her up when he was supposed to be just grabbing Pinocchio and getting out of here. But Riku really, really liked having Sora's attention on him.

"Riku!" She took a step towards him, the quick flash of a smile on her face dampening to confusion. "Wait, what do you mean?"

"Really?" Riku halfway grinned, "Because you keep playing around with m—with that keyblade."

He had stammered slightly, as Riku very nearly spoken aloud the words that the Dark corner of his mind's been insisting all along: _His_ keyblade. Riku's and nobody else's.

"I'm not playing around with it," She replied, "You know that. What are you doing here?"

"Just playing with Pinocchio," Riku answered airily.

"No, seriously," Sora nearly pleaded, and Riku couldn't help but feel a little bad at that. "Did you ever find Kairi?"

Oh. How did he manage to forget that?

Riku glanced down at the puppet, remembering his reason for being here in the first place. A puppet with a Heart, a girl without. One who waited back in Hollow Bastion for help. Here Riku was, running around and playing tag with a stupid puppet because he was chasing some pipe dream of normality, when Kairi's Heart needed to be fixed.

And at that moment, an idea came to mind: What if he could recruit Sora to help? Maybe with that _(his)_ keyblade, they could get a better chance at finding a solution.

A smile curled around the edges of his mouth again. "Maybe. Catch us and I'll tell you what I know."

Riku grabbed the puppet's arm and led him away quickly through the room beyond, not hearing whatever Sora shouted as he ran.

The two kept going from room to room, organ to organ, and eventually the puppet spoke up.

"Mister," He asked as Riku continued to hold onto his arm, "Where are we going now?"

Riku wasn't exactly sure himself at this point. The only thing one his mind as to what to do next was to keep running and hope Sora followed, but he couldn't exactly tell the puppet that. As he got a thought, Riku stopped.

"New game idea," Riku said as he grabbed the puppet's shoulders and got down to one knee to look him in the eye properly. He smirked. "Hide and seek _and_ tag. At the same time. Sound good?"

The puppet looked very excited at this. "Sounds, great, Mister! Or, uh, should I call you Riku now? That's what she said your name was, right?"

"Call me whatever you want," Riku felt the corner of his mouth curl up, up, as a Dark joy snaked a vine through his Heart. _After this, it won't matter at all. You won't be able to say a word._

"Why, is Riku not a suitable name?"

He scowled at the sound of Maleficent's voice from behind, while the puppet looked almost overjoyed. "Miss!" He called out happily, and would have run to her if Riku hadn't extended his arm across to block his path. The puppet looked up at him, his rounded eyes laced with some confusion at this.

"I changed my mind, call me 'it'. Better run before I tag you," Riku said craftily.

The puppet flashed a gleeful smile as he nodded voraciously and scampered off, his wooden joints clacking all the way away. Riku didn't bother to look to Maleficent as he spoke.

"What are you doing here?"

"I decided to make a visit to see how your work was going," She commented, "And if you'd managed to catch the puppet yet. I see you're chasing him away, however."

"I have a plan," Riku asserted, but his tone came out weaker than he'd have liked. Sora's face flashed in his mind. "Someone just got in the way earlier, that's all."

He tried looking her in the eye at this, to hopefully have his stubborn expression give more power to his words than his voice did. But all it did was seem to amuse Maleficent, as she tilted her head slightly and stared right back. Riku got that feeling she was staring right into his soul again, and his throat clenched up.

"That girl again?" She asked knowingly. His hackles raised at once.

"What do yo—"

"Why do you still care for that girl?" Maleficent crept closer with slow, confident steps. Riku wished desperately that just once he'd see her trip, or fall flat on her face, or _something_. Just a stumble, even. "She has all but deserted you and your dear Kairi for her new companions. And the keyblade."

 _(If you want something, why not take it?)_

He swallowed and lowered his eyes. "I don't care about Sora. I was just messing with her a little."

Riku didn't need to see her face to know Maleficent was raising an eyebrow at him as far as it could go.

"Oh, really?" Her voice nearly dripped with amusement. "Of course you were. But alas, duty calls for me, and I should be on my way soon. But before I go, I'd like to give you a reminder. And a little help."

"Help?" All he had to do was capture a puppet. "I don't need any help."

"You'll need it more than you think," She replied, her fingers teasing a Dark portal out of thin air as she began to step into it. "Just as you'll need a reminder of the danger of Darkness more than you think. Remember: The heartless prey upon it."

"Mind your own business!" He bit out. But Maleficent was already gone.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

Her eyes fluttered shut. Kairi didn't feel inclined to go back into the white room, and so she didn't.

But she knew she would go back in there eventually. It wasn't as if there were anyone else in this place to talk to after all.

Her stomach was still in knots, but at least Kairi could breathe again. The back of her neck still rang with sharp pinpricks of pain. But the part that hurt the worst was her Heart.

The initial terror of the revelation was over, but that still left the aftershock circling through her like a slow flood that threatened to drown her over and over again. A churning riptide just under the surface Kairi could barely keep her head above, that circled around her legs like a shark.

And her only thought was: _This is so much worse than lilacs._

Because this wasn't some unsayable reverie that might come to the fore every once in a blue moon, something on the tip of her tongue that couldn't get past her teeth. This was her life now. And Kairi would be stuck in this place for the entirety of it with no hope of a solution: The best thing she could do was nothing. No chance of interfering with Maleficent's plans again by telling Sora, and she couldn't even hope to get her body back lest everyone else in existence suffer for it.

"This whole being a martyr thing sucks," Kairi muttered as she scrubbed a hand down her face. There was no reply but the quiet rustle of sand falling away. Fate could have at least allowed her to have a choicein the matter.

She decided to go see what Sora could be doing now. Maybe watching more go fish would help Kairi calm down.

 _They ran from room to room, chasing any glimpse or sound from Pinocchio that they could. A stray word here, the fleeting dash of a feather there. Sora could tell she and her friends were beginning to get worn out from all the running, but she couldn't risk stopping. Who knew what Riku was planning to do with Pinocchio?_

 _('Stop Riku and Maleficent', Kairi had told her. Sora followed that order even beyond Agrabah.)_

 _Finally, they closed in on him. It was quick, with Goofy primarily leading the way with his particularly sensitive ears, able to hear the distant clacking noise of Pinocchio's jointed arms and legs as he ran even when Sora and Donald thought they had lost the trail. It didn't help that most of the rooms in this place looked nearly identical, with the only visual differences being a fleshy cliff here or a barrel there at times._

 _Sora slowed down as she came up on Riku, who stood by unconcerned as Pinocchio clambered past him into the next room. Beside her, Goofy and Donald slowed to a stop as well, and looked to her with slight confusion. She ignored them._

" _Riku!" She called out to him, and he slowly turned his head, still unconcerned. "What's the matter with you? What are you thinking?"_

 _Oh boy,_ Kairi thought. What has he done now.

In a weird way she was almost thankful for this, as it helped significantly to distract her from her situation. But that wasn't as happy of a thought she wanted it to be.

" _Don't you realize what you're doing?" Sora finished sadly._

 _Riku put a hand on his hip. "I was about to ask you the same thing, Sora. You only seem interested in running around and showing off that keyblade these days." His eyes glanced downward towards the keyblade in her hand, and it took some time before Riku bothered to look her in the eye again._

" _Do you even want to save Kairi?" He asked her._

" _Of course I do," Sora faltered to a morose tone. She mentioned looking for Kairi to Riku first, after all, back in Traverse Town. Why was he acting like this?_

 _But before either of them could talk more on the matter, a yell was heard from the room beyond. Pinocchio. Everyone's heads snapped towards it._

 _And then they ran._

* * *

 **SORA**

It was a heartless. Which, while technically mundane at this point, Sora supposed, was still somewhat surprising. None of the group had encountered a single one until now.

But then that raised another question: Why now? One glance towards Riku told Sora enough to know it wasn't his doing, for he looked just as surprised as she did.

Sora ultimately decided to just not think about it, once she saw Pinocchio was trapped in its maw, which had long teeth that worked as makeshift prison bars. The heartless gave a garbled screech.

The sound was what drove her to action. Sora readied her keyblade and leapt forth, raising the hilt of her weapon to guard against the swinging rubbery arms of the heartless coming down from above. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Riku circling around the wall of the chamber, his eyes searching for a weak spot. Sora jabbed the tip of her keyblade into the openings between its teeth.

It gave another garbled noise, pained, and Sora could see a flash of silver hair duck out from behind the heartless and the raise of a sword shaped like a black wing. It screeched again.

At Riku's strike, the heartless interlocked its arms and raised them high into the air, bringing its arms down heavily as the hands-like appendages at the ends conjoined to make a blunt weapon. Sora raised her keyblade to guard again and could hear Goofy yelping as his shield rang with a _gong!_

Donald, however, wasn't quite so lucky. The arms came down on him slightly at first, as Sora and Goofy shared the blow, and then once more with force as the heartless saw he didn't guard against the hit nearly as well as the other two had. He gave an angry squawk that bordered on distress, and Sora saw he was hurt.

"Heal!" She cried as she nearly jabbed her keyblade at him, the tip glowing green just as the wound did when it began to seal itself up and return to normal. Donald gave a grateful sigh.

" _Thank_ you," He said, and cast a gamut of spells in angered retaliation at the heartless. Fire after lightning after frost spiraled out the head of his staff, and the heartless' arms forcibly let go of each other as it screeched again to writhe in pain. But then he risked hitting Pinocchio, who was only scarcely protected from the magic by the heartless' teeth that imprisoned him.

"Ow!" Pinocchio cried as a burst of flame skirted past the edge of his shin. "Get me out of here!"

"That's what we're trying to do," Riku groaned, and muttered something under his breath that sounded like 'stupid puppet', but Sora couldn't be sure. The strike of her keyblade against the heartless' teeth drowned him out. She struck again.

Riku circled around once more, parrying the heartless' arms as they swung, and brought up his sword sharply. The weapon jabbed into its side with a muffled noise, and it screeched again. A long trail of Dark smoke seeped from the heartless, joining the other hits the creature had sustained thus far.

Sora looked up towards the top of the heartless, spying the head-like part of it from where the arms sprang out of. Perhaps if she hit it, she could damage it more. Or at least maybe it could stop the arms from swinging much. Goofy gave a shout as one arm came down on his shield again, which was raised over him and Donald. Sora began to move away from the heartless towards the outermost edge of the room, her eye twitching at the sight of the walls and floor pulsing. For a place that was supposed to be the inside of a whale, and looked anything but, that didn't stop this place from being _disgusting._

Riku gave her an incredulous expression as he saw her moving away, misinterpreting her as running from the fight. "Stay with it!"

"I have an idea," Sora argued, and finished climbing onto the highest point of the chamber floor's edge she could. Then, she jumped.

The ridge she had jumped off of wasn't quite high enough to do much, combined with the spongy give of the floor not being a hard-enough surface to jump very well on, but it was just enough for the tip of her keyblade to leave a long wound on the face of the heartless' head to dribble Darkness from copiously. Its arms forcibly parted and its entire body seemed to spasm with pain, with the jaws on its—stomach? Sora wasn't exactly sure—just beginning to open. Pinocchio reached out towards Donald and Goofy but couldn't quite reach.

"Do it again!" Riku encouraged, "We'll do it together."

"Together," She echoed quietly, and both of them whipped around at the sound of the heartless screeching again, its loudest yet. "Let's go!"

They both raced towards the wall and climbed onto the ridge, this time disregarding the moisture of the room's construction that got on their hands. Sora could feel the tremors of muscle under her feet.

"On three," Riku suggested, and at Sora's nod he went, "One,"

Donald and Goofy both readied their weapons, Donald's staff giving off waves of heat strong enough to turn the air hazy around the tip.

"Two,"

She tightened her grip on her keyblade and reared it back. Riku grabbed his weapon with both hands, his gloves making a rustle against the hilt. The heartless drew its arms back.

"Three!"

They jumped in nearly perfect sync, bringing their weapons down in a slow arc over the heartless' head. Sora could see it beginning to raise its arms out of the corner of her eye to defend, but it was too slow. The long wound across its face was matched by two more just like it in an instant, their weapons ringing out with a dull clang as they collided slightly. Their eardrums nearly burst when the heartless screeched again, and Sora could feel a fire spell rippling through the air past her as she fell back down to the floor.

The heartless' arms spasmed continuously as it writhed in pain, and everybody got back as quick as they could when it dug its claws into the purpled ceiling of Monstro's bowels. And then, with its arms shaking as it struggled to lift itself in pain, the heartless raised off the ground towards the ceiling. Its movements were traced with the waft of Dark smoke that poured from every wound it took.

The heartless' maw opened wide as its makeshift prison for Pinocchio finally opened, and it spat him out towards the giant hole that suddenly opened up in the floor. He gave a trailing scream as he fell straight through. Riku immediately jumped in after him.

Sora, however, held back. Donald and Goofy were both giving her curious looks as she eyed the heartless still suspended on the ceiling, that was watching them all with a glare.

"We can come back for it, Sora," Jiminy reminded her as he peeked out from under the brim of Donald's hat, "We've gotta make sure Pinocchio's okay first."

"You're right," She relented as she gnawed on her lip. She just didn't want to risk it getting out and going around Monstro wreaking havoc, though. But Sora shook her head and leapt into the hole as well.

* * *

 **RIKU**

He angled himself mid-fall so the landing wouldn't hurt and rolled awkwardly onto his back. Riku spied the puppet close by, blinking and rubbing at his head. The puppet's own landing would have probably killed a normal person by the way he hit the back of his head on the way down. Or at least would have made them black out. But this was a puppet, after all, with a skull of wood and not bone, even if his status of possessing a Heart made certain people forget he was just an object in the end.

"Father!" Pinocchio cried, and made his way towards Geppetto only to be snatched away at the last second. The puppet was lighter than Riku would have thought. "Mister, what are you doing?"

Riku declined to answer and scrambled up the side of the wooden scaffolding along the outer edge of Monstro's mouth. From behind, he could hear Sora and the rest of the group tumble down into the chamber with them. He climbed onto the top platform and spared a glance to Geppetto, who was looking at him with panic.

"Pinocchio! _Pinocchio!_ " Geppetto shouted out, running to the railing of the crashed ship he had made his home in. "Please, give me back my son!"

Riku had to hand it to him: Geppetto put on a good performance. Riku really could believe that this addled geezer thought the pile of painted wood in his arms was his child. He almost felt bad.

Almost.

"Sorry, old man," Riku dismissed Soul Eater so he could have a better grip, "I've got some unfinished business with this puppet."

"He's no puppet!" Geppetto protested, his panic starting to crest into indignance. "Pinocchio's my son! He's the Light of my life!"

Riku could see Sora slowly walking up with an uneasy look towards Riku, that shifted into an unreadable expression.

 _(Sora looks to Geppetto and doesn't just see an old man like Riku does. Sora sees her mother, wherever she could be, wandering an unknown world in some distant corner of space screaming for her daughter.)_

"He is pretty unusual, I'll give you that—Not many puppets have Hearts." Riku shrugged. "I'm not sure, but maybe he could help someone who's lost theirs."

"Wait a minute," Sora spoke up, and finally looked away from Geppetto towards him. "Are you talking about Kairi?"

 _Took her long enough,_ he thought to himself. But Riku didn't deign to respond, and instead carried the puppet towards the upper exit out of Monstro's mouth towards the throat amidst the racket the puppet made as he begged to be let go.

Riku hopped up, slightly off-balance from carrying the puppet, from platform to platform in the throat as the room pulsed and writhed all around him in time with some enormous heartbeat. His jumps were larger in this room, as the vacuum at the top end sucked at him slightly and made for a strange gravity. At the topmost platform Riku gave a great leap towards the black hole in the ceiling, falling upwards to the noise of the panicking shouts from the puppet.

He continued to shout even after they safely landed on the outer edge of the stomach, yelling for Geppetto again. "Shut up," Riku growled, and thankfully the puppet complied, falling completely silent at once. Riku skirted around the wall of the room and kept an eye on the bright green glow of the pools of stomach acid that laid nearby. It wouldn't be good to step in it, even if this place looked completely unrealistic to how the inside of a whale should be. Riku wouldn't take the risk.

He sat the puppet down on another platform at the edge of the room and held out his hand towards the wall. The beginnings of a Dark portal played along his fingers as Riku heard footsteps from the entrance of the room.

"Let Pinocchio go, Riku."

"Come on, Sora," Riku sighed as the traces of the portal faded away. She was being ridiculous. "Who is more important to you? A puppet, or Kairi? The choice is obvious."

He turned to her, then, and felt his expression soften. Sora wore her Heart on her sleeve and forgot to listen to her head first sometimes. Riku held out his hand, just the same way he did that night when the islands fell. When Sora didn't realize the potential Darkness had for them both. For everyone.

She would learn the truth of Darkness, and Riku would teach her.

"How about it, Sora? Let's join forces to save her. We can do it together."

 _(United, they could handle anything. Nobody and nothing could defeat them. And that was a fact of life, like how the sky is blue, grass is green, and Sora and Riku were unbeatable when they were together.)_

He took a step towards her, and another. And another.

 _(She gave him a wink as she raised her wooden sword and gestured with it to his, clutched in his hand.)_

 _("No problem. We can do anything when we're together!")_

But before he could get any closer, Sora steeled her gaze. The keyblade blazed into her hand with a flash of Light and Riku lost the ability to breathe.

She was going to fight him. She was genuinely going to fight him over this.

What about Kairi?

What about him?

"What?" Riku laughed, half disbelieving and half angry. "Y-you'd rather fight me? Over a stupid puppet?"

"He's not just a puppet, Riku, he's someone's son," She affirmed.

"This is ridiculous," He fumed, "He's a puppet! An object! He's not a person, he wouldn't even have a Heart if he wasn't given one by magic!"

"Even if he didn't have a Heart before, he's always had a conscience," Sora said as a small cricket wearing a top hat clambered down the duck's shoulder and raced towards the puppet, who got up as quick as he could and ran to meet him halfway. So much for trying to catch the puppet.

"A conscience."

"Yes, Riku," Sora said, "A conscience. That little reminder of what's right and wrong. I don't know what you've been doing around the worlds, but I know you haven't been listening to yours."

She got into her sparring position, but this time was different: Her grip was tightened on _(his)_ keyblade, her expression gone to stone. The crown necklace around her neck glowed with a green light as it reflected the pools of bile all around them, as if in malevolent teasing. This was no friendly shoreline spar between two friends over wooden swords. This was something else. And he would have no part in it.

"Then you leave me no choice," Riku extended his hand and summoned a Dark portal faster than he ever did before. _I'll just save Kairi and the worlds by myself._

He heard a tumbling noise after that but didn't care to look back as he stepped through. Riku's shoes made a squelching sound as they touched upon the wood floor of Kairi's room in Hollow Bastion before they could clean themselves, the soles wet with saliva and stomach acid and who knows what else from that place. Riku dragged over the chair from the room's desk towards Kairi's bed and flopped down in it, holding his head in his hands. For several long minutes, all he could manage was breathing.

"It didn't work," he choked out, "It didn't work. I'm so sorry."

Riku tore off his glove to wipe at his eyes, his vision gone blurry and prickling. His throat clenched up around the shaking breath Riku tried to take.

Sora pointed her sword at him. She abandoned him, after everything.

All for some misconceptions and a pile of painted wood.

" _Come on, it's a couple stories up," Riku sighed as Jasmine stepped out of the Dark portal, her eyes searching the vicinity as her posture immediately stiffened. Her expression was cagey, but it dissolved back to anger as she saw him gesturing for her to follow._

" _I'm not going with_ you _," Jasmine said. "Wherever it is I have to go, I'll find my own way there."_

" _That's if the heartless don't find you first."_

" _It would still be better than your company," She snapped. Riku turned to walk back to his room, waving her on lazily. But it turned out that wasn't the last of what Jasmine had to say to him._

" _You were wrong, by the way."_

 _He turned back around just as lazily, a brow raised in question. "About what?"_

 _Her eye was fixed towards the sun in distrust, and all around them both Riku could see the shadows in the corners of the room begin to dance. Small peeks of yellow eyes twinkled here and there. Finally, Jasmine looked to him, and her next words were laced with a pity he couldn't stand more than anything._

" _There is always, always room for love."_

There was something sticking out of Kairi's pocket, he realized.

It looked like the edge of a seashell. He reached, and then his hand retracted slightly. But his curiosity overcame his uncertainty, and Riku fished what turned out to be several seashells and a bead shaped like a crown out of her pocket, loosely connected by twine. _The thalassa shell charm,_ he realized. It was still incomplete; the twine wasn't properly woven yet like he'd seen in finished sailor's charms. At several points it crisscrossed awkwardly, by no means up to Kairi's usual quality of work, the twine only precariously holding it together for now. When she'd left the islands, however she had managed to do so, Kairi had undoubtedly brought it along with the intention of finishing it properly.

But the part that hurt the worst was the tiny face that smiled up at him. The face of the girl Kairi had made this charm for.

Sora didn't just turn her back on him today.

"Sora turned her back on you too," Riku murmured as he looked to the small smiling face of the Thalassa shell charm. "She abandoned both of us."

Jasmine could say he was wrong all she wanted, he thought to himself, but it wasn't the truth. There isn't always room for love. Here in Hollow Bastion, in this great crepuscular beast of a citadel, there wasn't any room for it at all.

There was only room enough for the Dark.

* * *

 **AUTHOR NOTES**

And with that, Riku has officially crossed the moral event horizon!

Also, DID ANYONE ELSE FIND IT FREAKING IMPOSSIBLE TO NAVIGATE MONSTRO WHEN THEY PLAYED? Anyone? Just me? Seriously, it was impossible and I wandered around for like an hour before I decided to give up and consult a video, they should have added some more landmarks. Also, I'm surprised nobody in the game ever mentioned how Freaking Gross™ it would be to wander around inside the anatomy of a whale.

Also also, in the games it's sort of (maybe?) implied the reason why Riku was in Monstro was because Capt. Hook's ship was swallowed by it too, en route back from wherever they found Kairi's body at in the real game (which was also implied to be Big Ben/Neverland by re:coded, but I don't believe that for a dang minute) (especially since she ends up in freaking Twilight Town with Roxas' crew when she goes through that Dark portal in KH2), but I never found much solid explanation for it so I just kinda sprinkled in my own ideas as always.

You can hear the exact moment Riku's Heart breaks in the game right after Sora raises his keyblade, it's neat ȏ.̮ȏ

Notes:

1\. I managed to fit in that toaster! The Genie decided to just give it to SDG after realizing he would never have a one-millionth customer, of course

2\. One of the differences in the novelization is that they decided to combine Ansem Reports 1,2, and 3 into the first report SDG find. This is a really interesting choice (albeit not a very plot-conscious one IMHO) because the whole narrative the game provides about Ansem is that originally, seeing only report 1, it upholds this image of a well-loved and wise king. Then you get report 3 from Ursula, which shows you something was up even in Ansem's time, but still upholds the impression he had good intentions with his work. The thing about the 2nd report, which you get from Aerith at the very end of the game, is that you learn Ansem wasn't the good guy you thought he was and actually made the heartless himself. A total plot twist! That's part of what made the first game's plot so great, IMO, that some of the good guys turn out to be the bad guys all along

3\. Ancient romans totally had curling irons! They were called calamistrums! I wasn't just being facetious with that! And yeah, yeah, Hercules was about ancient Greece, whatever. Pain wore little Velcro sandals with hercules' name plastered across them, I can say the ancient greeks in the movie had curling irons too.

4\. Always wear your seatbelts, everyone ಠ_ಠ

5\. You know how one of Sora's default poses of having his hands behind his head? You can see in BBS little Riku doing the exact same pose, which makes me think Sora saw him doing it back then and imitated him ever since. It's one of those really cute details of this series!

6\. Pinocchio totally does mean 'pine eye', and IIRC the original story detailed him as being made of pine, too. But for some reason in the Disney movie they made his nose bud flowers instead when it got long enough. I presume it was for comedic effect.

EDIT: WAIT NEVERMIND! Pinocchio may also mean 'pine wood' or 'pine nut' or whatever, and his wood type is never actually named. The Blue Fairy just calls him 'a boy of pine' for shits and giggles, I guess. I gotta read more :(


	10. Chapter 9: A Prison of Sleep and Stone

**KAIRI**

Funnily enough, Kairi had actually completely forgotten she'd still had the thalassa shell charm in her pocket when everything went down. That entire day was a haze, with only the worst of it still clear in her mind, but Kairi vaguely remembered using the simplest knot to tie the pieces together haphazardly so they wouldn't come undone and stuffing it in her pocket to think about later.

And later had arrived, it seemed.

She watched Riku stare at the pieces as both his face and his Heart darkened as one. What once had been a candlelight at the end of a Dark tunnel, a hopeful beacon, had now dimmed to one lone star in a sky devoid of its fellows.

A north star. A way to guide the Heart where no conscience was found.

Kairi looked to the charm. And then she found her way back onto the play island again.

After the time she'd spent lying on the shore outside, sifting the sand through her fingers and feeling her pulse begin to ebb with the waves, she realized she was sick of the shore and its reminder of how she was still stuck. She idly wondered if this was a little bit like how Riku might have felt, and then quickly dismissed the idea: Riku had never lost the use of his legs, and he wasn't trapped at the risk of everybody else's suffering if he ever gained freedom. It wasn't the same at all.

But, she thought, what _was_ the same was how they both stared at a horizon that felt like the bars to a prison cell.

Kairi finally trudged back towards the white room.

She hovered in the doorway and absently looked around the chamber, watching the slow crawl of magic lighting up the images of chains through the walls, the floor. The altered symbol of a geometric heart that was imprinted around the room, that matched the silver badge the sleeping boy wore. The throne that was as white as snow, that the boy slept upon even now, completely unaware of their plight.

Kairi walked over to her usual spot against the wall and halfway collapsed against it, and slowly slid down into a seated position. She stared blankly into space.

She wasn't really in the mood to talk right now.

* * *

 **SORA**

She was sprawled out in her chair, the seatbelt now haphazardly buckled over her and her askew limbs (and it was questionable as to if the seatbelt would still work effectively if Sora was in her current pose, but Sora figured there wasn't anything visible in the part of space they were currently at, so she decided to not bother moving for now unless another whale appeared on the horizon).

Placed precariously on her face was the latest Ansem Report the group had found, courtesy of one Oogie Boogie from Halloween Town. Sora, now long bored of playing go fish against Goofy, who _continually_ won the rounds now with the increased practice, blew on the report repeatedly until it floated on the current and gently floated back down onto her face, in which case then she would blow on it again and reread a little bit more of it.

 _Psh-whew!_

'— _I am studying material from the meteors that rained down that fateful night. What a find! The material is foreign to our world. It is elastic to the touch, and when two pieces are combined, they bond easily. None of the records even mention such a substance. —'_

 _Phoo-o-o-o!_

'— _Was it introduced to this world when I opened the door? I wonder how many other such materials drift through the atmosphere of this tiny world…I wish I could soar off and find out! Could there be uncharted worlds up there? —'_

 _Phew-woo-woo!_

'— _But I should stop speaking of such unrealistic dreams. For now, there is no way to venture outside this world. My people and I are all but prisoners of this tiny place—'_

"Do you guys think Geppetto and Pinocchio got to Traverse Town okay?" She asked, now beginning to get bored of this pastime as well.

"I sure hope so, Geppetto was an expert with using those gummis," Goofy said optimistically. "That ship turned out pretty neat, ahyuk!"

"There's no way they couldn't have made it with that star shard," Donald grumbled out in response, still disbelieving of Pinocchio's story and peeved at having to help slug around gummi blocks for a day. He flicked a couple of switches on the dashboard and a menu popped up on the screen before him.

"New route, huh?" Sora asked as she straightened slightly at the sight. "Do we get costumes again?"

Sora hadn't stopped trying to see if her wings could fly the second she had seen the changes to their appearances in Halloween Town, and this resulted in more than a few accidents—Sora had become some sort of a vampire thing, from what she could judge by her new fangs, whereas Donald had become a mummy (with part of his midsection missing, to his dismay), and Goofy transformed into a sort of…monster thing? None of them were able to figure it out, but the giant screw that had appeared in his head attracted quite a number of the lightning bolts Donald had fired off from his staff in their fighting.

"Only if it's necessary," Donald replied grumpily. "We can't go getting costumes willy-nilly, it'll drain my magic."

"You're just peeved because we kept throwing candies through that hole in your torso."

"Well, it certainly didn't _help._ "

"How many points did you manage to score, Goofy? Thirty-five?"

"Thirty-eight," He chuckled, and Sora couldn't stifle her grin as Donald threw them both a scowl and switched a lever, making _Highwind_ lurch forward in speed to retaliate. Both Sora and Goofy were jerked around in their seats slightly, and Sora finally straightened in her seat for good.

"Hey, Jiminy? You wrote down our scores, right?" She asked, and Jiminy looked up suddenly from his journal.

"Sure did," He replied, to Donald's dismay, and glanced down at the journal again. "But what d'ya guys think Ansem meant when he said he 'opened the door'?"

Sora shrugged. "Maybe he's just talking in metaphors?"

"I don't know about that," Jiminy tapped his pen against the page as he pondered, "From what Cid's told us, Ansem seemed to be pretty straightforward on his research."

"Ya don't think he had to open a real door to let King Mickey in to visit?" Goofy asked.

"Either that or something similar." Jiminy hesitated for a moment. "I was thinking about what Leon and Yuffie explained to you, Sora, about how your world fell."

She blinked. "Yeah?"

"You said that your friend Riku mentioned opening a door of some sort? And not long after, the heartless invaded?"

"Y-yeah," Sora answered sheepishly, uncomfortable at the reminder in light of the events at Monstro.

"So if King Ansem had opened a door like that by the time he penned this report, and later on his world fell to the heartless like Cid said, what if it was the same scenario?"

"Wait a minute!" She butted in, "Maleficent's the one in charge of the heartless, who knows if opening the door did anything bad? Remember how my dream right before I got the keyblade told me I'd open some sort of a door too."

Albeit, that was right before Riku had opened the door on Destiny Islands, and so had fulfilled for himself what was presumed to be Sora's destiny. But she didn't mention that particular piece of information.

"That's true," Jiminy conceded, and resumed tapping his pen on the cover of his journal as he considered her words. "I guess opening this door just lets outsiders access the world in question?"

"And it lets outsiders in to wreck the world order," Donald reminded them from his spot in the pilot's chair.

"I'm sure King Mickey wasn't intending to wreck the world order when he visited, Donald," Goofy said.

"Yeah, but I'm talking about all the _other_ outsiders."

"Like us?" Sora laughed, and laughed again when Donald turned his scowl on her once more. Everyone in the cockpit was jolted in their seats slightly as he made the gummi ship go even faster towards their destination. "Come on, you gotta admit we wreck the world order at least a little bit just by showing up and fighting heartless!"

"I'm not admitting anything," Donald replied steadfastly, "Except that we'll be at Atlantica soon. You better get ready."

* * *

 **RIKU**

He flung the heartless against the wall, where it slid down with a gasping noise and dissipated into Dark smoke before it reached the ground.

Immediately, another leapt onto his sword arm, the claws on its feet making a hollow ringing noise against Soul Eater as the heartless climbed, and it gave a fitful swipe at Riku's face before he could grab it off him in time. A stinging feeling on his cheek was left behind as the heartless was picked up, and Riku held out Soul Eater in front of him in a guarded stance as the heartless went two-dimensional and started moving away. Quickly, yet carefully, Riku followed as he kept his eye on it.

It returned to normal form halfway behind a column. The second he saw its head rising back up out of the ground, before it could lunge, Riku swiped right through its short neck with his sword in one fell swoop. And with that, the heartless were gone.

All except for one…or, none?

Riku had turned to look towards the doorway with a smile and was soon disappointed. The little heartless that usually hung around to watch him was decidedly absent today, which was odd. It was always there when Riku had sparred with the heartless. And if not that, it always at least made its way to his preferred training room by the end of the round if it hadn't already been there when he began, its yellow eyes twinkling in curiosity and antennae swinging, as if the little heartless were desperately pondering something about what he was doing.

He decided to go look for it. Riku hoped it didn't get destroyed, which he couldn't deny the irony of such a thing since that was exactly what he was doing to its fellows not a minute prior.

But this heartless had somehow become special to him in the time it had woken him up every day by poking him on the nose—It had started as a nuisance, but Riku had begun to look forward to that part of living here, even when every other aspect of life in Hollow Bastion was beginning to fall short in his discovery of Maleficent's deception. And Kairi, well, seeing Kairi could only do so much when she wasn't able to reply to him whenever he talked. If anything, seeing her had sort of become depressing, as it had made him feel so helpless in the face of whatever had happened to her.

Which in itself was ironic too, one could suppose: Riku had come all this way to understand the Dark, to learn and use the power it had, and he couldn't figure out how to use it to help his friends. It was the whole reason why he had started this in the first place. But Sora betrayed him for _(his)_ keyblade and some new lackeys to hang out with, and somewhere along the way Kairi had lost everything and Sora didn't even care.

Riku hissed out a forceful sigh as he wandered from wing to wing, room to room. He couldn't get distracted with that now. No use ruminating on a foregone conclusion, it was time to move on and see what he _could_ fix.

Eventually the familiar walls he had traversed often gave way to unfamiliar layouts and passages. Here and there heartless wandered, just as they often did in some parts of the castle, but none of them were the ones he was looking for. Riku decided to follow them. Perhaps his friend was among them.

Up and down the lift stops, from floor to floor, and though there were heartless of all sizes he still did not find the one he was looking for. What had started as idle curiosity had become something closer to worry: Riku knew the heartless were expendable, he went through them in droves in his training—and though the logical part of himself knew the little heartless was just the same, he couldn't help but feel a connection to it. Riku hoped nothing had happened to it.

Eventually he ended up back in the chapel. Often it was populated with at least a couple of individuals with the meetings Maleficent held, individuals that Riku couldn't care much about alive and cared even less for dead. Jafar and Oogie Boogie were never particularly amicable, after all.

But today the chapel was empty. That wasn't anything new to Riku, but what was new was the cavernous opening on one section of the wall.

His steps slowed as he got closer, and Riku studied it. It looked as if it were part of the room's construction all along, with its finished edges and carefully laid brickwork inside, but it couldn't be: Riku had been inside of the chapel many times and never saw it before. All that was ever usually here was just another flat section of the wall framed with the pilasters that made up the décor of the room.

Or was there? Riku still hadn't pinned down the extent of Maleficent's powers, but it didn't seem out of the question that they could include illusions. He cautiously got closer.

Partially into the tunnel, and Riku could just begin to catch sight of a dimmed light at the end of where another room waited. His steps echoed in the passage as the torches along the walls flickered green.

Riku arrived at the steps down into the chamber, the doors to which were already opened. He could see where they were emblazoned with silhouettes shaped not unlike the skeletal remains of cast-iron fencing visible around the outer bulwarks of Hollow Bastion, that cast gaunt shadows that clawed at the pavement. But here there were no broken fragments in the silhouettes, no flaws in the design. Just perfect arches and columns that evoked the image of the walls of a garden.

Farther into the room he could see vast staircases curve around the bottom of a rounded platform, flanking a violet flag emblazoned with a curlicued emblem that was likely left from the previous occupants of this citadel. Running along the floor, extending out from under Riku's feet, was a luxurious red-and-blue rug that was markedly in better condition than most of the other furnishings he had seen elsewhere. In fact, now that he inspected what he could see of the room a little more closely, the entire area was much more nicely kept than most of the citadel: The walls were free of claw marks, and the floor was free of debris. Large vessels forged of polished metal gleamed with bright blue flames, marking the edges of the rug and framing its design of the heartless emblem. The ceiling stretched far above.

He stepped inside cautiously and stopped.

There, carefully placed inside recesses in the walls, Riku could see Alice, Jasmine, and three other girls fast asleep.

* * *

 **SORA**

She screwed her eyes shut and held her breath as they tumbled off of the rocky shore and into the waves.

The gummi ship quickly disappeared beyond the surface of the ocean, the reds and yellows and blues of its hull blurring into each other before all that was visible remaining was the rays of sunlight streaming through the water. Her lungs began to burn, and Sora resisted the urge to breathe in as she could feel her lungs quake as her instinct fought against her will. Some bubbles escaped past her lips, drifting upward and soon vanishing from sight. She could feel her legs sewing together and it became impossible to swim as she normally did. Sora kicked her legs—or, by now she figured it'd be more accurate to say _leg—_ uselessly.

Sora realized something was up when she could still hear underwater. Back on the islands, whenever she'd swam under the waves, the last thing she'd hear before going under entirely was the burbling of water in her ears before everything went muffled. But now, Sora could hear Donald and Goofy beside her still thrashing about, with Donald's scratchy voice muttering spells and curses at alternating intervals under his breath.

Finally, Sora couldn't hold her breath any longer. She breathed out, and her vision cleared, with the darkening at the edges of her vision now gone. Her lungs still burned slightly, but nothing like they were before. She breathed in.

 _Wait a minute,_ Sora thought with a start.

"I can breathe underwater?" She asked as she opened her eyes, and saw that Donald and Goofy had transformed into some sort of amalgamations between their normal forms and undersea creatures: Donald's normally webbed feet and feathered tail had shifted into six tentacles quite like an octopus, whereas Goofy's entire body was now that of a turtle's, with his face peeking out from between the shell. Donald's staff ceased glowing once their transformations were complete. If they got turned into fish, Sora wondered inwardly, did that mean she got turned into one, too?

She looked down at herself and let out an excited squeak too fast to be stifled in time.

Sora had turned into a mermaid.

Her legs had been replaced by a deep blue tail similar to that of a dolphin's, with slick skin instead of a fish's scales, and she cautiously poked at it, feeling the touch where her thigh had been. Sora wiggled what had been her feet, and the end of her tail waved back and forth in the water, gleaming slightly to reflect the light of the sun far above. She was still wearing her necklace, but the rest of her garments were gone, replaced by a matching blue bikini top made of a clamshell.

"Of course you can breathe underwater," Donald huffed as he awkwardly tried to upright himself in the water with his lack of feet. It didn't work well. Beside him, Goofy was trying to wobble each of his turtle legs to move around. "It'd be impossible to blend in with undersea creatures if we were drowning!"

"Donald, I'm taking back all of the mean stuff I said about your magic," Sora said as she shimmied about, in efforts to relearn how to swim. She slowly drifted around, moved by the current, and saw they were all being twirled about slightly.

"Good, you better." Donald replied. Sora could see he turned his head at an awkward angle to talk, as he was beginning to drift upside-down.

"Gawrsh, I wonder if there's another one of those Ansem Reports here too," Goofy wondered aloud. Donald turned to reply, and Sora decided to take the opportunity to get some distance and angle herself away from them to check the clamshell top. It'd be _really_ awkward if it ever came loose, she thought with a shudder.

A slight tug, and it gave no signs of any risk of coming off. A harder tug, and eventually tugging with all her strength, and still nothing. She let go at the feeling of her skin beginning to burn with the pain of being tugged on so hard. The clamshell must have been welded to her skin, or part of her anatomy in this world. _No risk of that, then,_ she thought with relief.

Sora looked up at the sound of shouting. Coming straight towards them was a group comprised of, from what she could see, another mermaid and two much smaller fish. Sora could hear Donald and Goofy quieting down at the noise as well.

"Come on, Sebastian! They're right on our tail!"

"Ariel, wait!" An accented voice replied, and Sora saw it came from a bright red crab that could barely keep up. "Slow down, don't leave me behind!"

"You guys, there's someone up ahead—!" The other fish called out, and nearly crashed into the mermaid as she stopped suddenly once she caught sight of the trio.

Her previously harried expression shifted as her eyes widened, and the mermaid took in their appearance. Sora with her mermaid tail and silver necklace, and the halfway fish-like visages of Donald and Goofy, who were trying feebly to stay upright.

"Oh, my!" She gasped, "Hello! Are you new around here?"

Sebastian brought a claw to his forehead in exasperation.

"Don't talk to them, Ariel!" He cried, "They could be enemies!"

Ariel rolled her eyes. "Relax, Sebastian. They don't look like them," She turned to the yellow fish that ducked behind her, and asked, "Right, Flounder?"

Flounder poked his head out shyly. "I don't know, there's something weird about them."

"I, uh," Sora nervously laughed, "What do you mean?"

"You guys do seem a little different," Ariel agreed and swerved around gracefully to inspect them from all sides. "Where are you from?"

"From, um, from somewhere far away," Sora tried, and she could see Sebastian eyeing Donald and Goofy suspiciously as they clumsily swam around. "And we're not really used to these waters. What was it you were running from?"

Before any of them could answer her question, a group of jellyfish-looking creatures bobbed closer from where Ariel and her companions were speeding through, and Sora could see the heartless emblem on their heads. The keyblade blazed to her hand with a gleam of Light, and she raised it in front of her.

"They're here too?" Sora asked exasperatedly, and swam like how she'd seen Ariel do to meet them halfway. A wave-like movement from the waist as she moved her legs as one, without the kicking she'd done before. Sora could see electricity tingle along the edges of one heartless' limbs, and the one closest to her raised its arms as if to smack her away.

Fighting as she normally did was harder to do in the water, which pulled at her arms and kept her movements from being as powerful as she'd like. The tooth of the keyblade dragged down one heartless' head and a trail of Dark dust seeped out into the water, which clouded her vision. The heartless flinched back from the wound and lunged forward to attack as Sora guarded with a swift raise of her weapon.

A flash of light lit up the stony walls around her, and Sora glanced over to see Donald casting one electricity spell after the other. The heartless flinched away somewhat, Dark trails seeping from their wounds, but it seemed electricity didn't have as significant effect on these as it would other types of heartless. But Donald's attacks were fast, and that was what made the difference.

She raised her keyblade and joined him. Rather than electricity, she shot out alternating blasts of fire and ice from the tip of her weapon, noting how the frost spells restricted their movements as the ice encasing their limbs tried bobbing upwards, and Sora could hear Ariel giving a cry of amazement at the sight of their magic.

They made quick work of the heartless Sora had already struck, with the Dark trail seeping out into a cloud as a glowing Heart bobbed towards the ocean surface far above. Soon after that, another heartless that Donald had been chipping away at joined its fate. But before Sora could try and see where the others were, for her vision was obscured by the dust, she could feel a harsh slap to her back from another heartless' arms.

Sora hissed out a fire spell towards where the blow had come from, and Donald joined her. The magic lit up the lingering traces of the Dark clouds, reflecting their light. She swam closer and struck blindly, again and again and again.

A rush of bubbles was her response as the heartless feebly tried lifting its arms to fight back, and with one more fire spell courtesy of Donald, it dissipated into a Dark cloud. Far above them all a shimmering Heart trailed after the others.

And that left one. This time it was Goofy that struck the hardest blow, as he figured out a diving move that sped him across the water in a small, powerful spurt, ending with the edge of his shell leaving a long gash in the heartless' head. Sora raised her keyblade to cast a fire spell, but before she could mutter the word, Goofy had already taken care of it with another flick of his shell.

"I've still got it!" He cheered, and clumsily spun in circles through the water.

"Wow," Ariel marveled, and they turned to see her and the others with their jaws dropped. "Oh, wow! What was that stuff?"

Sora blinked, and her and Donald shared an uneasy glance. She really hoped they hadn't disrupted the world order already—ten minutes would make for a new record. "Do you mean the heartless?" She hoped, gesturing to where the creatures had been.

"Well, that too," Ariel supposed, and pointed to her keyblade and Donald's staff. "But that bright stuff! It…it made the water warm!"

"You mean fire?"

"Is that what it is?"

Sora blinked again. "Have you never seen fire before?"

"They live underwater," Donald whispered, "When would they have ever seen fire before?"

Sora rolled her eyes at him but didn't reply.

Ariel shook her head. "Could you show me that fire again?"

"I, uh," Sora glanced to Donald, and he gave her a shrug. He must have figured there was no use trying to hide it, since they already revealed its existence. "Sure, I guess. _Fire!_ "

She held out her keyblade and fired off another burst of flame, and this time Ariel raised her hand to try and touch it. But before Sora could warn her against it, the fireball had already just grazed along her fingertips and Ariel flinched away with another awestruck look. She looked at her now pink fingertips and flexed them.

"That's amazing! Fire, you say? Gosh, it hurts. Like a weird sort of hurt, though."

"Like…it burns?"

"Burns," Ariel echoed, as if to try and memorize the word. She flexed her fingertips again. Sebastian gave them all an untrusting glance, his eyes squinted.

"I don't like the looks of them," Sebastian warned, "Ariel, we've got to get back to the castle! Who knows when more of those things could show up?"

"Why, that's a great idea!" Ariel swam towards the trio. "I can't believe the way you knocked them out like that, you should come with us back to the castle. We need your help!"

"I didn't say that to suggest—!"

"I think they should come too," Flounder agreed, "Only your dad's been able to hold those things off, Ariel."

Sebastian gave a drawn-out sigh, and Ariel grinned. Sora looked back towards Donald and Goofy, and they gave her mirrored nods.

"Sounds good to me," Sora said as she turned back around towards the group. "Let's go."

* * *

 **RIKU**

He stumbled closer.

Beside Jasmine were two other girls he couldn't recognize: The closest was a young woman in a silvery ballgown, whose blonde hair was swept into an updo and fastened into place with a headband that matched her dress. A wan smile was spread across her mouth as she slept, and Riku could see her gloved hands were restrained behind her by some strange black substance that held her in place in the recess.

The next was another young woman with blonde hair, this time down, with a golden tiara on her head. Her smile matched the other girl's as her arms were just as restrained, and the black rocky material had crept further onto her blue dress than the other girl's had.

He stumbled over to the other row. On the end closest to the door laid a girl Riku couldn't recognize either, her short black hair tied back with a red bow, and her blue-and-yellow dress encumbered with that same black stone. Another wan smile. And next to her, Alice.

"No," Riku gasped as he unconsciously raised a hand to his mouth. " _No._ "

Her hands were held behind her as the black stone trapped her in the recess. And just like the rest, Alice looked to be sleeping peacefully, a small smile curled at the corners of her lips. To the right of her was an empty space, waiting to be filled. Riku didn't want to think of who would go there.

This isn't right, he thought. This isn't right at all. Why are they sleeping so peacefully? Why were they smiling when they were trapped? Riku looked to Jasmine: Another smile. That couldn't be natural at all. Jasmine would have not gone gently into that good night, he knew it for a fact. She would have fought with everything she had and more.

What was this place? Was this what his work had gone towards?

A prison of sleep and stone?

He heard a swish of robes walking down the stairs and wrenched his head over to look. It was a miracle he'd managed to hear it past the drumming of his pulse.

It was Maleficent. A movement out of the corner of his eye made him look up and he could see the last vestiges of a Dark portal circling away just past the balcony on the platform above. Who had she been meeting with?

She looked surprised. "My child, what are you doing down here?"

"Tell me the truth, Maleficent," He commanded, and shook his head when she had begun to answer, already knowing the next words out of her mouth. "And don't say 'balance', there is no balance here. Tell me the truth. Now."

Maleficent was less than pleased. He couldn't bring himself to care.

"This _is_ balance, boy," She began, and cut him off before he could say anything more. "I told you in Agrabah that those who beg for change the most might not always like the face it presents to them. Such is the same here. You came to me asking for change in the form of balance, and this is the face it presents itself to you in."

"You're imprisoning them! I brought them to you because I thought you'd—you'd—" The truth was that he hadn't any idea what she would do with Alice and Jasmine when he brought them to her, but it certainly hadn't come to mind that she'd ever do such a thing as this. "I don't know, you'd give them a place to stay! A job! Like me!"

Maleficent laughed, and it made Riku feel insignificant.

"Remember, boy, Jasmine hadn't even wanted to stay in the same room as you. You think she'd want to partake in our line of work?"

"Well, no," Riku sputtered, and raced over to the closest recess where the girl in the tiara slept. "But I didn't think you'd do this!What's this stuff on them? Why are they under glass?"

"I have a plan in mind for all of this."

"Then tell me. Tell me what this 'reward' is that you were talking about with Jafar," He exploded, not missing the way her eyes narrowed at this. "Tell me your real plans with the princesses, tell me why you're helping Kairi!"

"So you _were_ listening, then."

"Yeah, I was," Riku spat. "I'm not stupid, Maleficent. I was always going to figure out what's going on around here one way or another. You might as well tell me yourself."

She raised her chin slightly, and an unreadable look dawned in her eye at his words.

"Fine, then. I'll tell you the truth," Maleficent replied, "As you may already know, what me, Jafar, and the rest of our associates sought was a certain Heart."

"I already know about the Princesses of Heart."

"No, boy, beyond theirs. The Princesses are only a means to an end."

The rest of what Jafar had said came back to him. "You're talking about the Door?"

"Precisely. Somewhere deep inside the Darkness—and I mean true Darkness the likes of which neither of us have ever seen, that nobody has seen since the age of tales—there is the Door. Behind it lies something that goes by many names."

She went on, "Some have called it the Heart of All Hearts, the Great Star, the One True Light. Or, if the teller of the tale were being cheeky, the Light That Slumbers Still. But one name that everyone knows it by is Kingdom Hearts."

She stepped towards the case that held the girl who wore the tiara.

"The measure of a Heart can vary," Maleficent said. "With the Princesses of Heart, we know theirs is formed of nothing but Light. But for beings such as us, we are something of a Darker shade. As for Kingdom Hearts…well. We know not what makes it for sure, for all we have to go off of are stories from a bygone era, but you may be able to infer enough from a name like 'the One True Light'. Yet what lies within it is not only Light, but untold wisdom."

"Wisdom?"

Maleficent nodded. "Such was the reward I spoke of. Wisdom is the one true power, though Kingdom Hearts undoubtedly holds infinite amounts of the latter as well. But it is wisdom that shall bring your foes to their knees, and it is wisdom that shall give you anything you could ever want."

"And the Princesses of Heart…"

"…They were the key," She finished, "Technically only part of the key, really."

"Then what was the rest of it?"

"You and I," Maleficent said simply. "And Jafar, Hades, Ursula, anyone willing to join our cause. The key to Kingdom Hearts requires seven Hearts of pure Light, and thirteen of Darkness. I am attempting to recruit more to form the Dark portion of the key as we speak."

"Seven and thirteen are pretty specific numbers. Why those?" Riku asked.

She shrugged. "Who am I to deny the word of destiny?"

He had to admit that much of what she said made sense, even if her methods of fulfilling the requirements were distasteful, he thought with a glance around them. To plant Darkness at a bastion of Light such as Kingdom Hearts could help yield balance—true balance—for good. Somewhere in all that wisdom there had to be a way to save Kairi.

And somewhere in that wisdom lay another chance at a keyblade.

"That reminds me," Maleficent spoke as her mouth widened into a smile, and then a grin. "I must say, my child, I was pleased with your initiative in seeking the puppet some days ago."

"I didn't accomplish anything, though."

"Actions are meaningless without their intentions," She explained. "And you intended to go the distance to find your answers, further than you ever have before. You intend to still. Your Darkness proves it."

"It does?"

"Oh, yes," Maleficent drew closer, and Riku took a step back. She drew closer again. "And I think it's time I taught you a few more tricks with it, don't you think?"

That made him stop in his tracks. "Like what?"

"I've seen how you go through the heartless in your training. I won't say I'm not impressed, but I think you would become something truly marvelous with a little help. A little authority. What say you to the ability to command the heartless?"

Riku swallowed hard. If he had the power to control the heartless, he'd be capable of so much more. He could stop Maleficent _(and maybe even take her place)_ , keep the heartless from turning others forcibly like he'd seen in Agrabah _(and open the Door and show the Heart of all Hearts the truth of Darkness)_.

He could command the heartless to help him get Kairi her Heart back.

 _(He could open the Door and get the keyblade that was promised all those years ago.)_

"I want it. I want anything you can give me."

Maleficent's grin had never left her face as the conversation progressed, and at his answer it grew wider still.

"Excellent," She said. "Then close your eyes and breathe in deep, and brace yourself."

Before Riku could ask what Maleficent meant by needing to brace himself, she raised her arms, the sleeves of her robes billowing with the movement. His eyes closed of their own accord.

The first thing he felt was a warmth, and Riku could see green light blaze through his eyelids. The warmth grew hotter, and hotter, searing his skin, and just as he began to gasp in pain it subsided into the feeling of sharp pinpricks up and down his arms and legs like they were waking up again after lying still for so long. Like Riku's blood had been replaced with a static that roared in his ears.

He sucked in a gasp, and Riku finally opened his eyes again. He could see the last traces of that green light ripple across himself before they disappeared.

 _Soon Kairi,_ he thought to himself.

 _Soon._

* * *

 **SORA**

"Ariel! I've told you not to leave the palace!"

"But daddy—"

"No! You know it's dangerous out there," King Triton's voice seemed to thunder across the water as he spoke. "Were you blind to those things trailing after you as you came in here?"

The 'things' in question were stragglers to the heartless they had fought along the way, that rapidly gained in number the longer they remained to fight. And just like in Traverse Town, the group elected to start running from the heartless if there were too many at a time to take care of fast enough in favor of getting help in finding the keyhole and ending the issue of the heartless for good. Thankfully, the creatures were felled in one shot by the trident in his hand.

The problem was, though, that while he—King Triton, who was also Ariel's father—was reportedly capable of helping them find the keyhole, he was not in the least bit willing.

He finally seemed to notice the rest of the group, and cast his eye on Sora, Donald, and Goofy. "And who are they?"

"They saved me from those creatures!" Ariel commended them as the trio introduced themselves. "Daddy, they say they can get rid of them for good if they find something called a 'keyhole'. Can you help us find it?"

"The _what?_ " King Triton's eyes widened, and he spoke quickly. "There's no such thing, certainly not here."

"But—"

"Ariel, not another word. You are not to leave the palace again. Is that clear?"

Ariel clenched her fists and seemed as if she had plenty more to say, but then she angrily dropped her arms. She swam back towards the trio with Flounder in tow, while Sebastian remained with King Triton. Ariel reached for Sora and Donald to pull them along with her as Goofy paddled by her side.

"Ariel, where are you going?" King Triton bellowed. She ignored him.

"Let's go," Ariel said as they moved from the throne room.

"But," Sora bit her lip as she looked back towards King Triton, who now had sunken into his chair with a sigh. He soon disappeared from view as they continued to move, and soon all that was visible were the distant blue silhouettes of pillars and sea life.

There were no heartless for a while as they swam through the gorge, only the stony faces of the cliffs that ran high above were the group's company. That, and the occasional fish or coral that teased at their fins and skirted just out of their fingertips.

"I'm sorry he's so stubborn," Ariel finally muttered.

"It's not your fault," Goofy consoled. "He's just looking out for ya."

"He treats me like I'm still a little kid. He never wants to let me do anything," She sighed. "All I want is to see the outside world, and collect all the little things humans use, maybe even see a human in real life! But he keeps saying it's dangerous, that humans are barbarians. He doesn't even try to listen when I tell him otherwise."

"King Triton doesn't want you to get hurt is all," Goofy replied. "When my boy Maxie was little, he'd get into all sorts of hijinks if I didn't tell him not to. Once he learned why he shouldn't do stuff that could get him hurt, everything was alright!"

"But he never tells me why. I'm just supposed to listen to whatever he says, but I know he's wrong."

"How do you know?" Donald asked.

"Humans are supposed to be scary. But I've found all sorts of their stuff, and nothing is the tiniest bit dangerous. If humans were barbarians then they'd make scary things, right, Sora?"

That caught them all off guard.

"W-W-What makes you say that?" Sora choked out.

Ariel giggled. "That thingy you're wearing, silly!" She replied as she pointed to her necklace. "Mermaid jewelry's always made out of kelp, seashells, or coral, but I've never seen anything made out of that shiny stuff. Did you find it somewhere?"

"I, uh," Sora faltered, and nervously grabbed at the necklace, feeling the sharp points poke at her fingers. "It was from a friend."

"Ya know," Donald said, "You never told us how you got that necklace before. I thought maybe you just picked it up somewhere."

"You never asked!"

"A friend," Ariel murmured, before twirling in place and looking up to the distant surface of the ocean, and the wavering gleam of the sun shining down. "It's only ever been me and Flounder looking for human stuff. I never knew other merpeople were interested."

She glanced back over to them. "Maybe you could come with me to search for stuff sometime, and bring your friend along too?"

Sora gave a sad smile at that. "Maybe," She said, and she didn't know if it was a lie or not. Only time would tell. And Riku. "But we've gotta find that keyhole first."

"Right," Ariel grinned, "If my dad won't help, let's just look for ourselves!"

* * *

 **KAIRI**

She decided to check back on her body and was promptly confused.

The first thing she noticed was the feeling of her nose being poked repeatedly, in a staccato that was slowly growing more urgent the longer it kept going. Whatever was poking her felt a little sharp, like a claw.

And then, Kairi realized with some alarm, it really wasa claw. Specifically, the clawed finger of a heartless that was intensely studying her.

Kairi watched the heartless, and the heartless watched her. And all along, it continued to poke her in the nose.

Something about this heartless' Darkness…Kairi _knew_ this Darkness.

But before she could try and focus further, to decipher more, the door opened. It was Riku.

"So this was where you went," He murmured, and smiled at the little heartless as it turned to him. Riku spotted its raised claw, stilled mid-poke. He chuckled as he shook his head.

"She's not gonna wake up like I do when you do that," Riku told it as he reached over and lowered its hand gently. "She's in a special sort of sleep. She can't wake up."

When he said this, his face slowly fell, and he looked away from them both.

"A special sort of sleep," Riku repeated quieter. He gnawed at his lip and looked back to the heartless before clearing his throat. "I need you to watch over this room whenever I'm not here. If anyone shows up in this room—Maleficent, another heartless, whatever—I need you to find me immediately. Got it?"

The little heartless had whipped its head towards him in rapt attention as he spoke and gone completely still. Its antennae were moving about like feelers now. And finally, it nodded. The gesture was stilted, unsure, like the heartless was doing an imitation of a nod.

"That actually worked?" Riku wondered aloud with a blink.

Then, as Kairi started to think about what it could mean that Riku had the ability to command the heartless—had he had it all along?—Riku left the room.

* * *

 **SORA**

"Still not here," She sighed as she put the rock back down. All that was under it was sand, and one obstinate starfish. Sora let her eyes roam over the sea sponge, the anemone. Nothing remotely keyhole-shaped in sight.

"Should we try looking around the sunken ship again?" Ariel suggested as they wandered about the ocean floor listlessly. None of the trio had swum so much in their lives, and Sora knew it was tiring them out even if they'd gotten a rest overnight. It certainly tired her out, anyway. Ariel must be absurdly athletic if she was able to withstand an entire _lifetime_ of this, Sora mused to herself.

"We already looked twice," Flounder moped, "Nothing around but that awful shark."

At this, everyone gave a collective sigh.

"I'm not sure where all the human stuff's gone," Ariel said, "Usually there's tons of it around there. Just the other day I found this amazing three-pronged dinglehopper right by the hole in the side of that thing."

Sora felt her brows wrinkle. "Dinglehopper?"

"Yeah!" She replied, perking up. "I've got an above-sea friend named Scuttle, he can identify anything you give him! I brought this little shiny metallic thing, like your necklace, to him and he told me it was used to straighten your hair. I've been using it ever since. It's a shame I left it at the palace, I'd love to show you now."

 _Wait a minute_ , Sora thought. A pronged thing used to straighten hair?

"Are you talking about a comb?"

Ariel gasped, while Donald gave Sora a warning spark from his staff.

"Don't upend the world order even more," He warned quietly.

"Donald, we already showed her fire, I'm sure it's okay to tell her the right names for a couple of things," Sora murmured back.

"It's a comb, you say? Oh my gosh, I didn't realize humans used words just like ours! That's so weird, what else could we share?" Ariel got a look of inspiration at that instant and raced to excitedly take Sora's hand in hers. "You've got to see my grotto! Why didn't I think of that earlier?"

"Hey, yeah!" Flounder wiggled his fin. "You guys could tell us the names of all sorts of things!"

"I've got a ton of human stuff collected there, gadgets and gizmos, whoozits and whatsits."

"Thingamabobs?" Goofy asked.

"I've got twenty of those," Ariel grinned. "Will you guys go with me?"

Donald was giving Sora a stern look, then, wordlessly warning her not to risk tampering any more. But Sora figured it would be way more promising than searching for the keyhole under another rock again.

"Sure," She replied as Donald heaved a sigh, "Maybe the keyhole's there, too."

"That's another good idea!" Ariel chirped, and raced towards another direction with renewed fervor. The trio and Flounder kept up as best they could. "This is going to be great, my sisters don't even know about this place. I remember this one time Aquata came really close to finding it—"

Ariel continued to babble on about her six older sisters and her various adventures in searching for human things the entire way to her grotto, with several parts expounded upon by Flounder here and there. Hearing about Ariel's own exploring reminded Sora quite a bit of the times she and Riku (and later on Kairi as well) would run around the play island and the various parks and beaches they'd visited in search of, well, anything. One day they'd play pretend at being pirates and dig countless holes in the ground searching for treasure, the next they'd be searching for imaginary lost ruins as explorers.

And then those memories, in turn, reminded her of Riku's actions at Monstro. They reminded her how he'd changed.

Sora raised her hand to the pendant of her necklace as she swam and felt the sharp edges of it poke into her fingertips once more. She raised it to her lips without thinking.

At the feeling of the cold metal Sora quickly dropped it again. Why had she done that?

But then, why did Riku do what he did?

She figured that perhaps they were both going a little crazy from being away from home for so long. After all, Riku had to either be crazy or really, really stupid to be working with someone like Maleficent. Sora tuned back into the conversation once she saw Ariel slowing down. In the corner of her eye Sora could see a black flash of something slither by, but it was gone by the time she turned to look.

"—Someday I'm going to see what's out there. I want to see a whole new world and be where the people are. I just wish my father would understand that. It's over here," Ariel said as she waved them over. The group swam over with varying degrees of skill to find a large hole in one side of an undersea rock formation large enough to come close to breaching the ocean's surface. They started to go inside.

"And may I present," Ariel started with gusto, "My collection from the outside…world…"

They stopped short at the sight of King Triton in Ariel's grotto. He was inspecting the room with a furious scowl, and all around him were shelves of ruined objects: Tattered paintings, broken vases, upended crates and chests. Higher up Sora could spot a lute with its strings ripped, and the neck broken off and nowhere to be seen. The silence they shared as King Triton slowly turned towards them was almost unbearable.

"Daddy?" Ariel said, in a voice almost too quiet to hear. His expression darkened.

"Ariel, Andrina told me you never came home last night."

"What did you—"

"We were worried sick about you. I've told you time and time again not to leave the palace."

Ariel's lip trembled as she shook her head and reached down towards a piece of a necklace lying on the ground by her fins, and her hand trembled just as much as her chin as she watched the pearls fall right off of the string back to the grotto floor.

"Everything Flounder and I worked so hard to collect," Her voice was thick, and she didn't look up at any of them. She just kept staring at that fallen string of pearls. "How _could_ you?"

Ariel heaved a sob and sped out of the grotto before any of them could stop her.

"Ariel!" Flounder shouted after her as he followed, and Donald and Sora scowled at King Triton. Goofy, meanwhile, paddled towards the fallen pearls with a sad look on his face.

"Father or not, that wasn't very nice!" Donald snapped.

"It wasn't me. Those creatures you and Ariel encountered were in this room," He explained. "You three are from another world, aren't you?"

Their shock told King Triton more than any response could. He hmphed at this and readjusted his hold on his trident.

"Then you must be the key bearer," He declared to Sora.

"How did you know?" She asked.

"You may fool Ariel, but you can't fool me. You don't know your dorsal fin from your tail." King Triton said. "And as the key bearer, you must know that a weapon such as yours can shatter piece and bring ruin."

"You're wrong!" Donald argued, "Sora would never do such a thing."

"Yeah, she's not like that," Goofy added. Sora smiled at them both gratefully.

"The road to ruin is often paved with good intentions," King Triton said quietly as he observed the broken objects all around them. "I thank you for saving my daughter. But there's no room in my ocean for you or your key. Please stay out of our world."

At this, he left the grotto without another word, and the trio were left alone in the mess.

Sora summoned the keyblade to her hand. It twinkled cheerily in the dim light of the grotto, the reflective metal smeared with bluish tones from being underwater. It was a simple design, with a crown shape matching her necklace pendant in the negative space of its single tooth. At the other end was the golden hilt with the keychain sprouting from the end, finished with a design of three circles connected together.

In her dreams of using it before the start of her journey, Sora had never used the keyblade to hurt her allies. Only heartless and denizens of the Dark. The bad guys. Fire, lightning, frost, any magic she cast was for play at the worst, and she'd never use that to hurt anyone either.

' _The road to ruin is often paved with good intentions.'_

But that couldn't be true. Not for her, who was chosen by the keyblade. Sora was one of the good guys.

Right?

* * *

 **RIKU**

The heartless—and his experiments to see how much he could control them—did wonders to distract him from thinking on his discovery of the Princesses of Heart and the empty space amongst them. Or at least, they could sufficiently distract Riku during the day. During the night, though, their peaceful faces in the middle of so much black rock haunted him.

 _No borders around, or below, or above._

Riku had to get _(his)_ keyblade back. He had to.

If a key could open doors, unlock shackles, free anything that could be bound regardless of what form the prison took, then maybe it could free the Princesses too. This wasn't just a matter of getting what was rightfully his anymore, it was a matter of doing the right thing.

The right thing…

" _You come back now with the same story about balance, about doing the right thing, and you expect me to fall for it twice!"_

Riku gritted his teeth. Obviously he and Jasmine hadn't seen eye to eye, that was the least you could say about their time together. But she didn't deserve _that._ Encased in glass, in stone, with an unexpected smile considering what Riku could only imagine had happened to her. What had Maleficent done?

What had he done?

No, Riku vehemently reminded himself, he hadn't done anything beyond following orders he was under the mistaken impression of being for the greater good. The only mistake he made was being gullible enough to take Maleficent for anything other than a villain.

And Riku would make sure to stab her in the back with every knife she was foolish enough to give him.

Starting with the heartless. He turned to choose another opponent from the small group he'd gathered.

"Better idea," Riku spoke, and felt a pleased rush as the heartless hung onto his every word at this. "All of you, fight me all at once. Now."

Soul Eater came to his hand in a flash as they lunged, and Riku barely raised it in time to deflect most of their claws. He gave a pained hiss as they reached out farther to grab at his arms, and he could see blood begin to bead along the cuts he hadn't gotten to with a potion yet. He'd have to be quick about this fight, because he wasn't sure his pride would let him call it off before it was over.

The instinctive anger he felt at being struck was useful for him to call forth particularly powerful Dark attacks, bolstering his leaps and giving him strength beyond what he had before.

One swipe of his sword and three weaker heartless fell instantly, with hardly any time for even a single curl of that Dark smoke to seep out and signify their injury before they succumbed. Riku grinned. He could get used to this.

Another heartless that decided to go two-dimensional rose from the floor and grabbed onto his leg. Riku kicked it away viciously as another heartless lunged for his back and began to climb, and Riku's attention was diverted to three different things at once: The heartless that were lunging at him from the sides, the one from below, and the one crawling up behind. Another swipe and two more heartless fell, and the third—one that wore pieces of armor—was not destroyed but certainly down for the count. The beads of blood had begun to trickle down and trace paths around his arms, droplets falling with the same intimidating reminder as the ticking of a clock.

Drip, drop, tick, tock. Keep it quick, Riku.

An uncomfortable squeeze at his throat was another reminder of his misplaced attention, and Riku gave a gasping exhale as he forcibly yanked the heartless' arms away. Its claws left reddened scrapes at his neck but thankfully no scratches, and Riku hurled it to the far side of the room where it collided with the wall with a _smack!_

He kicked again at the heartless that tried to gather around his legs, and some went two-dimensional to avoid the blow whereas others took it head on and suffered for it. Those were the ones to exude Dark smoke after the blow, and stumble somewhat afterward. Another kick, and they were done for.

The heartless that had clawed at his neck lunged once more, and Riku brought up Soul Eater with a swooping noise as its blade cut through the air and sailed right for the creature and split it in two. It disappeared immediately. A clawing at his foot made Riku look down and he saw the rest were trying to climb up again, and he leapt towards the ceiling as he could feel the Dark bolster his jump to get out of their reach. Angling himself slightly so that he fell with Soul Eater out edge first, Riku managed to defeat the rest of them before they would completely sink into the ground to dodge.

A chittering noise from somewhere towards his left made him look over. One heartless was left standing, one just the same as so many of the ones that attacked him. A small black thing with gnarled hands and feet and crooked antennae. At the sight of the creature an idea occurred to Riku, and he decided to call the fight. He'd be able to defeat this one with hardly a flick of the wrist anyways, so it was as good as done for regardless of it he had actually done anything to it.

"Stop," Riku ordered as he saw it prepare to spring. It twitched and got back into a normal position, its glowing yellow eyes staring at him curiously as it waited further instruction.

He thought to how Maleficent had used the heartless to round the Princesses of Heart up beyond what Riku did. Using them to round up Jasmine, for instance, when she had decided to traverse Hollow Bastion alone upon arrival. And who knows what else Maleficent's used them for? Spreading them amongst the worlds to help the onslaught of the Dark could entail a countless number of orders she may have given them, and whatever orders her cohorts like Jafar had to have given the things.

Riku could give them more complex instructions than simply telling them to stand guard over Kairi or fight him with everything they had. But he was a little short on ideas. There were almost too _many_ possibilities.

"Do a cartwheel?" Riku asked the heartless after several moments.

It turned its head slightly, as if trying to remember what a cartwheel was.

Before Riku could try and tell it how, it raised its hands and spread its feet slightly. The heartless looked over to where it would go and tilted to one side and kept its arms extended, landing on its palms somewhat clumsily before it angled one leg over to catch it as it did the controlled fall. And then, to Riku's surprise, it landed upright on its feet again and resumed looking to him for instruction.

The heartless had really done it. He made it do a cartwheel.

"Huh. Okay," Riku murmured. "Neat. Do it again."

It did.

"Again."

And it did.

"Do three cartwheels."

By now it had ended up on his right from the movement, and after it was done it stared back up at him. Riku bit the inside of his cheek to keep his smile from showing. _This is kind of rad,_ he thought. The sound of something beginning to drip onto the stony floor made him look down, and Riku saw the blood from his cuts had made their way towards the ground where they disappeared at once. He had forgotten his injury.

After taking care of them with a potion or two, he looked to the heartless again. "Jumping jacks?"

It did them continuously, and Riku was halfway considering just leaving it there to do jumping jacks for eternity, or until whoever else came in and told it to stop, but then decided against it.

"Okay, stop." It did.

"Um," He paced for a bit as he decided his next order. "Divide into two heartless?"

The heartless quirked its head again but did nothing. It seemed this wasn't a possible order, as a heartless was comprised of only one Heart. Or that was the best explanation Riku could come up with. He'd have to research whether a Heart could divide into two later.

"Never mind," Riku told it. Another idea came to him: If a heartless couldn't divide, could it change its shape?

It seemed possible, heartless already came in all shapes and sizes. Riku thought back to when he'd made Soul Eater with Maleficent's guidance. That was a different scenario—he was making something from nothing, or technically something nonphysical, and it required her magic because of it. But if he was already working with something physical, maybe Riku didn't need her magic at all.

"Become a dog," He commanded as he closed his eyes. Something simple, he figured, something easy to imagine.

Riku recalled the black veil he had imagined when forging Soul Eater. That formless black shape that could be molded into anything. He imagined the typical form of a dog: Pointed ears, a longer snout. Four paws instead of the heartless' own hands and feet, and a shift to its posture that made it walk on all fours. A tail at the other end. He opened his eyes.

The thing in front of him was now a dog, but still with some heartless qualities. It stared at him with perfectly circular glowing yellow eyes, and it was an unnaturally black color that seemed to absorb all light in the room, like it was the silhouette of a dog. Its tail did not wag, but rather hung limply.

Riku breathed out a laugh as he walked forward to scratch the heartless dog behind the ears and grinned. It was fascinating to see the effects of his new power even if it wasn't perfect, as the heartless didn't give any response to Riku petting it like a normal dog would. Riku decided he'd have to see if he could adjust its behavior to fit its form later.

He stood back up. "Become a cat?"

Riku closed his eyes. It was easier to shape the silhouette now with practice, and it readily yielded to his imagination. The four legs remained but shortened slightly while the proportion of the torso stayed mostly similar as it shrank in size. The shape of the head changed the most, with the ears remaining pointed yet shorter, and the snout receded into the skull into a more feline profile. The tail lengthened.

Riku opened his eyes. Now it was a cat, though with the same typical heartless eyes and color palette as the dog.

Another idea occurred to him. If he could make animals…could he make people?

Riku knew in an instant who he wanted to make. The same person he had wanted to see the most throughout this entire journey, who had fallen out of his reach when he went through the Dark Portal towards the unknown. The one who he had been so desperate to see again. Who made him feel happy, and when she couldn't make him feel happy, she made him feel like things were going to end up alright in the end. Even if things weren't so okay right then.

The one who could beat him in any staring contest. The one whose house he had a key to, who never knew how many sleepless nights he had stared at that key even when he had avoided her. Who didn't know that sometimes he'd still take it out and do nothing but stare at it and think of home. Of her.

And she was also the one who had pointed _(his)_ keyblade at him and abandoned him and Kairi.

It was like fate was playing an awful joke on him. To make Riku _still_ want to see her after everything she'd done, and even though they were technically enemies now. Enemies. The word tasted awful on his tongue, and Riku wasn't sure if he'd be able to say it aloud if he tried. To say such a thing would make it real.

No. He would save that for another day.

"Become Sora."

Her image so easily to him, and Riku wasn't sure how he felt about that. The black veil in his mind took a general humanoid form and he tailored it to the imprint of her still in his Heart. Shorter, with lean arms and legs, and hair that never stayed neat for long. The swimming shorts and short-sleeved hoodie she'd ended up off-world in, with those garish yellow shoes she loved so much. Her fingerless gloves she'd gotten to match him when he got his own gloves.

More specific, now: The belt that she wore and left mostly undone, which used to be number one on the list he liked to call _Fifty Things About Sora That Bugged the Crap out of Riku (That He Wouldn't Change for Anything)_.

The exact angle of her nose, which Sora loved to demonstrate was perfect for balancing writing utensils on.

The crown chain affixed to aforementioned belt, that he'd gotten for her as a birthday present one year when he saw how perfectly it matched her necklace.

And finally, the necklace itself.

He could recall the shape of it clearer than anything else. The gleam it took as it reflected the light of shooting stars, how it sparkled merrily back in Traverse Town when Riku finally saw her again that first time. Three sharp points with circular gaps in between them. The simple chain that it hung from.

Riku opened his eyes, and there she was.

* * *

 **SORA**

"Ariel!" She yelled towards the expanse of the open ocean. " _Ariel!_ Where could she have gone?"

"Ariel! Flounder!" Donald yelled, his scratchy voice elevated to near deafening levels. "Anyone?"

After they had left the grotto, their mood dampened from their discovery and King Triton's words, the trio had wanted to try and find their companions. Each of their guesses as to what might have happened to her and Flounder were less optimistic than the last, as there was a notable amount of heartless around. Then again, seeing even one heartless could be considered notable, as they did not bode well for the world and could quite quickly multiply. And not for the first time since they landed in Atlantica, Sora wished King Triton would have just put aside his convictions and helped them find the keyhole in the first place so the heartless could be taken care of entirely. She gave an angry sigh.

"Gawrsh, guys?" Goofy spoke up. They turned to him, and he said, "I think we should try going back to the castle."

Donald scratched his head. "Huh? Why?"

"Ariel wouldn't go back after thinking Triton broke her stuff, and he wouldn't be willing to help us anyways," Sora agreed, "What would be the point in going?"

Goofy moved to paddle back towards King Triton's palace before he answered. "Just a feeling," He replied.

"Why, do you think she and Flounder are in trouble?"

"Nope," He replied, and when he looked back to see them both unsatisfied with his answer he explained, "Maxie would do the same thing whenever he got mad or if we didn't agree on something. He'd go to the park or somewhere else for a little while to calm down, and usually by the end of the day he'd come home and we'd be able to talk about it. I betcha Ariel did the same thing, and she'd have to go home eventually."

"I dunno," Sora could feel stress settle at the edges of herself. "What about the heartless?"

"Yeah," Donald admitted. She could see Goofy pull his mouth to one side in concern, and then Sora knew he had considered the same.

Goofy shook his head. "We gotta stay hopeful. No frowning, no sad faces."

She pulled the corners of her lips into something resembling a smile, but that had become harder to do since Monstro. Goofy was right though. _Highwind_ ran on smiling faces.

And the Dark ran on anger, fear, sadness…practically everything else, it seemed.

But the Light ran on hope. It ran on altruism, on joy. It ran on the will to fight.

And if nothing else, Sora was good at fighting. She was good at hoping. This whole thing was just another sort of test, that was all. A test she had been studying for all her life.

" _Maybe this is what we've been practicing for. The real test. We pretend to be knights all the time, so what would be different about this?"_

Nothing at all was different, except for the fact that Riku and Kairi were not by her side. But that was okay. Even if fate or destiny or whatever had set all of this in motion didn't have plans for the three of them to be together again, Sora planned for them to be together again, and that was enough. There was just the matter of fixing everything and getting Riku to stop this whole Darkness business first.

But first the keyhole. And Ariel and Flounder.

The trio soon realized something was wrong as they approached the throne room where King Triton was supposed to be. But at the moment, as they could see through the pillars, he was absent and only his crown and some small object they couldn't see sat where he once did. Before the throne they saw Ariel and another figure, the latter of whom whose torso ended in a body skin to an octopus' instead of a tail like any other mermaid. Flounder hovered close by Ariel with obvious alarm.

"—Now that dear daddy's been silenced," The unknown woman cackled, and Sora could now see King Triton's trident in her hand. "We had a deal, didn't we?"

Ariel's shoulders shook.

"Ursula, no! I didn't want this!" She begged. "Give me back my father!"

Ariel's hands trembled as she reached towards the crown and scooped up the object that was situated within it. Not an object, Sora realized, but some creature. A creature whose features looked suspiciously similar to King Triton. A pair of moray eels came from either side to circle around Ariel and Ursula, the latter of whom cooed at the eels and brushed a hand lovingly along their spines.

"We cannot find the keyhole," One eel rasped, its mismatched eyes fixed on Ariel.

"It is not here," The other chimed in, who looked to Ursula instead. She grimaced.

"It's got to be somewhere, keep looking! And as for you, dearie," Ursula turned to Ariel, "Be careful what you wish for. The price of making your dream come true can be huge, _especially_ if it's an impossible dream. Now," She said as she reared the trident high into the air, "Time for a little journey to the Dark world of the heartless!"

Ursula turned at the sound of the trio's shouts of anger at her words, and Sora could see she was indeed like no other mermaid they'd seen so far. For one, Ursula's skin was a startling lavender color, and a shock of stark white hair rose out of her head. Her rotund lower half writhed with black tentacles as they flared out, and her troubling smile was punctuated with a beauty mark.

"Why, we have company," She said with mock surprise as she eyed the keyblade in Sora's hand. "I'm afraid you're a little late, dollface. I've already taken care of things here. Now out of my way," Ursula growled as they moved to block her path, and she burst right through with surprising speed alongside her eels. Over her shoulder she yelled, "I've got an ocean to conquer!"

"After her!" Sebastian yelled from his spot on the throne, and Ariel rushed to put down the creature carefully before taking off herself. Sebastian wasted no time in scuttling over to it.

The trio, now accompanied by Flounder, swam to follow them out of the palace as quickly as they could. Along the way Sora could see other small brown creatures that Ursula must have transformed in her path looking up at the group with dreary eyes.

"We gotta stop Ursula!" Flounder sputtered as they raced through the water. "We can't let Ariel try and fight her alone!"

"What happened?!" Donald demanded, his grip on his staff tightening as small sparks began to flicker out of it.

"A-Ariel was crying, and Ursula found her somehow," Flounder struggled to talk as he raced through the water, "And told her you guys came from another world! An' Ursula said she could take Ariel to another world too but she needed the trident to do it, and I-I-I told Ariel not to do it! I told her this wasn't like picking up abandoned human stuff, this could be dangerous, but she didn't listen to me," They all swam faster now at the sight of Ursula and her eels on the horizon, getting closer. They passed the sunken ship they had searched earlier. Flounder continued, "She led Ursula to the throne room and King Triton walked in just as Ariel touched the trident, and then he saw Ursula and got really angry! That's when Ursula grabbed the trident and turned him into that thing, and you guys came in."

"Ursula tricked her!" Sora exclaimed.

"She mentioned the heartless, she's gotta be working with Maleficent," Donald scowled. "Still think she just went home to calm down, Goofy?"

"Gawrsh!"

"Donald! Now is _not_ the time," She scolded. "Besides, Goofy could have been right if Ursula hadn't shown up. We wouldn't know."

"Fine," He huffed, but his staff still crackled at the edges.

They had come up on a sort of clearing now, where the stony cliffs of undersea mountains were far off and there wasn't much in the way of coral or any other kind of underwater life out here. Even the sun's rays from far above didn't quite reach this place, making for a gloomy environment that would not be out of place twenty leagues more under the ocean's surface, and looked out of place for an area that was supposed to be in the same depths as somewhere like King Triton's palace. Had Ursula done this?

"Ursula!" Ariel bunched her hands into fists, "Turn my father and everyone back to normal or else!"

"Or else what?" Ursula simpered as the trident in her hand glowed threateningly, and its light was reflected in the eels' hides. She slid her gaze onto the rest of the group as they approached and gave a mocking laugh. "I see the rest have come to join those poor unfortunate souls."

"We're here to stop you, Ursula," Sora raised her keyblade to emphasize her point, and saw how Ursula fixated on it with distaste. At the edge of her vision, Sora could see Ariel circle around behind Ursula once she was distracted.

"I'd like to see you try," Ursula sneered. She raised the glowing trident in response and ran a hand through her hair to reveal a newly-placed crown that was nearly identical to King Triton's. The trident began to give off an unsettling humming noise as it charged with power. "Now watch the queen conquer, I'm going to wipe out anything that's in my— _AUGH!_ "

Ariel had yanked on Ursula's hair with astonishing strength, causing her head to be pulled back as her eyes wrenched shut in pain, which in turn caused her aim with the trident to skew. The bolt of energy that shot out of the trident soared far above the group's heads as they flinched, and at the sound of sizzling Sora realized it had hit Ursula's pet eels instead and destroyed them. Crumbling black particulate seeped through the current and was promptly carried away as Ursula watched, completely taken aback at the turn of events.

"I…wha…my darlings…" Her mouth hung open for a moment, and then her face twitched once, twice, as her expression turned mean and her eyes turned into something bestial. "You'll pay for this," Ursula started in a low voice as the trident glowed again and she smacked Ariel away. Dark clouds began to obscure the group's vision, and they clustered together as the smoke surrounded everything. "You'll pay for this!"

Sora kept a tight grip on the keyblade as she was blinded from the smoke and held the weapon out in front of her, ready for whatever might come from the fog. She could hear Ursula's voice grow monstrous as it boomed over the clearing.

"I rule the sea now, you pathetic fools!" She roared, and the smoke cleared enough to where they could see she had become a giant, dwarfing even the cliffs in the distance. Ursula swung her free arm out widely, and it caused a current that threatened to sweep the group up along with it. Her many legs rose and fell to cause the sandy earth to tremble, and the ocean surface was visibly growing agitated with her movement. Now, the group had to actively swim in directions changing every second to avoid being swept up or become trapped in the grip of a stray black tentacle.

"The sea and all its spoils bow to my power now," Ursula gripped onto the trident as it continued to glow, and Sora could see it form the center of a vortex as all manner of things got swept up in it. "And _you_ will bow right alongside them!"

Sora fitfully beat back one of Ursula's legs with her keyblade, noting unhappily how it only left gashes but didn't stop it in its path. Trails of Darkness seeped out that would have marked the doom of a normal-sized heartless, but the problem was that this was no opponent of a normal size. And by the time Sora could manage to leave enough cuts to weaken her effectively, Ursula may very well have noticed her doing so by then and taken steps to stop it. Not to mention that trident in her hand, that had potentially so much more capability than they'd seen already.

 _That trident…_ Sora thought about it as she continued to dodge. If they were able to get it out of her hands, maybe this could be fixed. But how?

She struggled to swim against the currents Ursula created, and saw how the others were trying to do the same with varying degrees of success: Flounder had long since gotten swept around and decided to hold onto Ariel, who was doing notably better than the trio at not getting tossed around. Donald was firing off spells of all kinds as fast as he could, and Goofy repeatedly did that flicking move he had done in their clashes with the heartless to Ursula's legs. But they couldn't keep it up forever, and Ursula didn't seem to be harmed very much by their work so far. There had to be another solution.

Sora swam upwards to try and get mostly out of reach of Ursula's legs and scanned the surroundings. There wasn't much to see, as most of the detritus had already been swept up into the vortex Ursula created. And what was left wasn't easily visible amongst the low light of the area combined with the remaining traces of the Dark smoke.

"This won't be pretty," Ursula crowed as she began waving the trident around, its glow partially blocked out by the swirl of rubble around it. Sora could feel the water give a great pulse as the rubble flew in all directions, and the force of it threw her around as well. Judging by the angry yell Donald made, some of it likely hit her friends.

She slowly opened her eyes. Where Sora had landed was a small distance away from the fight, and Ursula's looming visage was a little less overwhelming because of it. She could see great bursts of light shoot out, likely from Donald's spells.

She continued searching. There had to be _something_ useful around here, something big enough to hurt when it hit…

 _The ship!_ Sora realized with a start, as she saw its silhouette not too far away begin to quake as Ursula formed another vortex again. Its structure looked a little ramshackle, like it could begin to break apart if the current grew too strong, but even the pieces could still do significant damage. But if the structure could be fortified somehow, and they could make it sweep up into the current doing so, they could still win. But how?

Ice. That was it!

If they casted a strong enough frost spell on the ship, it could stay in one piece and it would get swept up in the current easier. Ice tended to float, after all. But Sora couldn't do it alone.

She swam back towards the group as fast as she could, her speed helped slightly by Ursula's vortex still building, and saw that they had made not much progress yet. Goofy was still trying to spin, his movements now wobbling with vertigo, and Ariel kicked and punched any of Ursula's legs within reach. Donald was still firing off spells.

"Donald!" Sora called out, "Donald, I need your help. You gotta help me cast the biggest frost spell we can, maybe a whole bunch of them."

"What are you thinking?"

"I think we can defeat her for good," Sora said, trying to grab everyone else's attention as Ursula continued to wield the trident.

She told them her plan, past constant interruptions with trying to dodge a stray leg or a piece of rubble getting sucked up. "So me and Donald gotta get to that ship, but I need you guys to distract Ursula, so she doesn't try using that trident if she catches onto us."

"Sounds a whole lot better than spinning," Goofy said as he dizzily held a flipper to his head. Ariel nodded and swam towards the handle of the trident, with Flounder staying behind with Goofy. And with that, Donald and Sora sped away towards the ship.

It took some doing, but they had made it there. And with no further ado they both started darting in and out of the ship casting all the frost spells they could. From fortifying the rudder, to plugging up most of the hull's and stern's holes, and most of the work going towards turning the bowsprit and remaining masts into viciously sharp icicles, the entire ship was soon encased in a significant layer of ice.

The water around Sora and Donald was so cold she could see small bits of frost hover around them as the temperature dropped sharply with their work.

Sora could still feel a slight pull at her as Ursula's vortex strengthened, and she grinned as the ship began to shake back and forth with the current much more than it did before.

"I think it's working!" She excitedly told Donald.

He huffed. "It better, I don't think I have a drop of magic left after that."

Sora didn't either, she realized. That gnawing feeling she got when her magic ran out from overuse was the strongest she'd felt yet on her journey, and she really, really hoped this succeeded.

"Don't think I've forgotten you, dearie!" Ursula shouted as she pulled the trident out of Ariel's reach. The vortex doubled in strength, and now the ship rose out of the ground with a river of sand pouring from the remaining holes in the hull, reducing its weight and making it go faster. Unfortunately, it pulled Sora and Donald along for the ride with the vortex's power, and they both grabbed helplessly onto whatever parts of the ship they could reach as it sailed through the water. The ice encasing it was so cold it began to feel as though it burned Sora's hands, but she didn't let go.

Ursula lowered the head of the trident to level it against Goofy and Flounder, and the vortex followed. The ship gave a nauseating turn as it got closer, and by now they were near enough that Sora could see Ariel had circled back around behind Ursula again and was reaching desperately for the handle of the trident.

Ursula's laugh was loud enough to nearly deafen Sora with how close she was, and the ice encasing the ship gave a crack as they left the frigid temperature of the area she and Donald had frozen it in. She desperately hoped it could stay together just a couple of seconds longer.

The vortex strengthened again, and the ship gave another terrifying crack.

Closer, now.

Sora could see they were heading straight for Ursula's back, and Ariel swam out of the way and made another dash towards the trident.

Closer.

 _Creak!_

Closer.

The ship groaned, and Sora's fingers felt like they were going to fall off from the cold.

The bowsprit was aimed perfectly at Ursula's back, and the sharp point of the ice speared right into her. Sora felt a little nauseated as she saw it come out the other side, and Ursula gave a choked noise before she began to fall over, her tentacles thrashing about as she recoiled from the pain. Sora and Donald let go of the ship immediately and swam away so they wouldn't get crushed, and Sora watched the trident slip out of Ursula's grasp as her eyes rolled towards the back of her head and she started to dissolve into Dark smoke. Ariel made a mad dash towards it and laid a hand on its still-oversized handle, and the trident visibly shrank to its former size as Ariel tightened her grip on it.

"Goofy?" Donald yelled, at the same time Ariel yelled "Flounder?"

"I'm here!" Flounder replied, and Sora looked over to see him dashing out of a large plume of the Dark smoke with Goofy close behind. They both looked as exhausted as Sora felt.

There was a flash of light, and the next moment all of their exhaustion was gone. The wounds the group had sustained from the fight had healed, and Sora could feel the gnawing sensation disappear as her magic was renewed. The group all looked over to see Ariel now wielding the trident.

"Let's go back home," Ariel said. "I have an apology I need to make."

* * *

 **RIKU**

"Fight me again," He said as he wiped away a small trickle of blood from the cut on his face.

This heartless Sora was mostly made of Dark smoke at this point, more mist than girl, but it didn't stop her from lunging again. Riku barely raised Soul Eater in time to block and the heartless' claws left another scrape on his forearm. His eyes darted to the doorway where he had stationed multiple heartless to keep watch in case Maleficent decided to come in and watch.

Riku did not want an audience, and especially not _her_ audience.

Today had started the same as yesterday since he'd discovered he could make the heartless transform into Sora: After getting out of bed and getting ready and a quick check-in with Kairi and the little heartless, Riku would make a mad dash down to the training room he frequented and pull aside several heartless along the way. Once there he would tell one heartless to go inside, and the rest to stay at the door and keep watch for Maleficent. And then Riku would promptly go in and tell the heartless to become Sora.

The first time he'd opened his eyes and saw her, even just an imitation, his Heart fluttered. And that made Riku furious all over again.

He was supposed to hate Sora now. He wanted to desperately, and he'd managed to hate everything else about the situation already—Riku hated his Heart for still fluttering like that, he hated fate or destiny or whatever dictated all of this for making them enemies, and he hated the Light because Sora chose it over him. He hated that duck and dog that tagged along with her everywhere she went because they replaced him and Kairi so easily. He hated that Sora was going along with all of it and being so stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, _stupid…_

…But Riku also hated how he couldn't hate Sora even now. No matter how much he tried, and no matter how much he wanted to.

That flutter in his Heart made Riku angry enough to tell the heartless to stop looking like her and leave, and Riku would not admit to the chasm in his chest he felt at seeing it go. And so, later, he got another heartless and turned it into Sora, and demanded that it spar with him, and that was how he ended up here. With yet another imitation of Sora to spar with.

He would have liked to pretend that this was like old times again, only no longer on a sunny shore. But that was hard for Riku to do with a Sora that was as Dark as the night, with round yellow eyes that reminded him painfully that this creature was not human, though it once was.

The heartless Sora kneeled down to all fours and charged towards Riku exactly like a normal heartless, and he grimaced as he reared back Soul Eater.

Another aspect to the heartless that kept Riku from being able to pretend was the fact that none of the Soras carried a weapon of any kind. He had tried forming a Dark keyblade in her hand, once, but upon opening his eyes he made it disappear immediately and never tried giving any of the others one since. Another time he tried giving one a sword shaped just like the wooden ones they'd sparred with back on the islands, but somehow it didn't look right in her hand anymore either.

The heartless Sora caught Soul Eater in the crook of her hand between her thumb and pointer finger. Even though Riku had held back on the strike, as he'd noticed himself doing inadvertently more and more during these spars, it was enough to destroy the heartless. Its hand gave way as it dispersed into Dark smoke and Riku's face fell.

For what felt like a long time, though it couldn't have been more than under an hour at the most, Riku did nothing but stand there and stare at where the heartless had once been. Where Sora had once been. Eventually the empty feeling grew to be too much, and he found himself standing in front of the door to the training room already reaching at the handle. Riku hadn't even realized he'd been walking towards it.

He opened the door, and the heartless he'd stationed outside of it looked to him. Riku pointed at one at random.

"You. In here."

Without missing a beat, it shuffled inside and Riku closed the door quietly behind it.

"Become Sora."

Now her image only had to blink into his mind for a split-second for the command to work, as Riku had done it so many times. The heartless didn't move as its limbs shifted and it stood straighter, and its antennae multiplied and settled into the exact silhouette of her hair.

"Fight me."

He'd triple-checked today to make sure Maleficent was busy and that Diablo was nowhere nearby.

Riku and the heartless fought, and they fought, and they fought. He alternated between pulling his strikes slightly and giving them extra fervor, and thankfully this heartless was able to withstand and fight back much better than any of the others he'd sparred with yet. Riku could almost pretend with this one.

In the back of his mind Riku thought: _No, she stands more like this than that,_ and the heartless shifted its stance slightly to match. Riku didn't realize it had done so, instead instinctively finding more similarities to Sora with this heartless. _Sora would plant her foot at a narrower angle and push her leg back more._ The heartless did so, and continued parrying. _She'd bring her other arm up to guard and bring her head down a little more._ The heartless did just that.

Riku found more similarities as he went and didn't yet realize the heartless could hear subconscious commands, too. And somewhere along the way he forgot he was supposed to be pretending.

He pulled his hits more and more, and soon enough it was mostly the heartless that was on the offensive as Riku was too distracted with the thought _This is Sora, it's Sora, she's here again._

 _(You're finally with me.)_

 _(Together.)_

"S-stop," Riku gasped as he stumbled over to the wall and leaned against it. They had fought for so long that he was completely out of breath, and his arms burned. He dismissed Soul Eater from his hand. "Stop the fight."

Sora looked at him blankly, tilting her head slightly. It was a questioning gesture that was so accurate it made his pretending into something much closer to believing this was Sora, right here with him. His Heart fluttered again.

Riku wasn't sure what exactly he was feeling right now. The adrenaline had bypassed anger, and fear, and changed into a sort of loneliness—which in turn confused that little place in his mind that believed this was Sora. How could he feel lonely if she were right here?

"I missed you," He whispered.

 _(Closer, please, I missed you.)_

Sora blinked, and drew closer. Her steps even had that slight bounce onto the ball of her feet.

 _(I need you with me. Choose me. Please.)_

She got closer.

It took him a moment to remember to breathe.

That feeling settled into something quiet and desperate and _needing_ at the bottom of his Heart that Riku didn't know the name of, that he'd never felt before. And its former quietude was ended in favor of something a little louder.

Before he knew it that something was getting louder and louder, until it pushed out his thoughts, his anger, his fear, anything and everything else Riku felt at that moment. Until there was only that something left.

 _(Please love me back.)_

Riku closed his eyes and leaned in without realizing what he was doing, and Sora did too. They both tilted their heads just so.

His lips touched a smooth coldness, and Riku finally realized exactly what just happened. He jerked back fast enough that his head hit the wall, and unblinkingly watched the heartless with an unnerved feeling as he cradled the back of his skull with one hand.

With the other hand Riku repeatedly wiped his mouth and looked back and forth between the heartless and the door, desperately hoping Maleficent wasn't anywhere near the door out in the hallway. He staggered backwards until he could feel the handle press into his back as his eyes didn't leave the heartless, who was still staring at him with its head tilted, and Riku swiped at the handle until he grabbed it and threw open the door.

He searched the hallway without stepping out of the archway, ignoring the remaining heartless looking to him in expectation of another order. Maleficent wasn't here, and neither was Diablo. Good.

Riku glared at the heartless outside of the door, and said, "I don't need you anymore."

They dispersed and went their own paths up and down the hallway. Riku shut the door with much more force than earlier and stared at the heartless Sora for a moment as it stared back, green eyes meeting glowing yellow. _Not blue,_ he reminded himself, _Not blue. Not real._

"Go away," He said quietly. It stepped into a Dark portal and disappeared. In no mood to deal with the long walk back to his room and potentially face Maleficent, Riku summoned a Dark portal himself.

Once he stepped out onto the floor in his room he went straight for the bathroom door, and once Riku opened it he made his way over to the mirror. Riku had both blanched and blushed at what had happened, the colors warring on his skin to subside into a strange sallow pink.

Riku realized then that what he hated the most about all of this was the feeling of emptiness returning to his chest—so much stronger now and so much worse for it—at knowing the heartless was gone.

* * *

 **SORA**

 _Later, when they had returned to the palace and Ariel returned the victims of Ursula to normal along the way, the group slowed when they began to come up on the throne room. Sebastian had remained with King Triton, who was still in his form as a polyp and sitting in the middle of his crown. They both looked over as the group swam in._

 _Ariel's face twisted with shame at the sight of her father. She grabbed onto the trident with both hands as it began to glow, this time a soft steady light as compared to when Ursula wielded it. Ariel closed her eyes as the polyp blazed with light, and the rest of the group did the same._

" _Your majesty!" Sebastian cheered as the light settled back into the prior form of King Triton, who looked to Ariel with regret._

" _Ariel, you deserve an apology."_

" _What?" She held out the trident as she approached, her forehead creased with confusion. King Triton took it. "I should be the one saying sorry, daddy, I took your trident and gave it to Ursula."_

" _It's my fault. You only followed Ursula because I wouldn't let you follow your Heart," At those words Ariel dashed towards him for a hug, and King Triton held his arms open wide. He looked to the trio over Ariel's head with none of the judgmental air he had regarded them with previously. "I did not trust you three, and for that I apologize as well."_

" _You were trying to do your best," Goofy encouraged, and Sora nodded. Beside them both, Donald huffed, but said nothing after Sora gave him a slight nudge with her elbow. The corner of King Triton's mouth curved up at them before he sighed._

" _Brave key bearer, I have one more request: Seal the keyhole."_

"So, it was here in Ariel's grotto _the whole time?_ " Sora gaped. "And you knew?"

King Triton nodded. "I didn't tell you because I hoped the situation would never come that anyone else needed to know. The more people that know of its location, the higher chance those such as Ursula may overhear, even by accident. It's interesting that Ariel chose this place to hide her discoveries from her excursions."

"It fascinated me for some reason," Ariel replied as she swam up and down the chamber to inspect her findings, repaired courtesy of King Triton with the help of his trident. "And there were tons of places in here for me to put my things."

Without further ado, King Triton raised his trident as the keyhole flashed into existence before Sora's eyes, and she wasted no time in raising her keyblade towards the keyhole as stars of Light swirled around its end with a chime.

A great beam of Light shot out of the keyblade towards the keyhole, and it disappeared with the heavy _click_ sound of it locking. Finally, the group was left in the peaceful quiet of the grotto.

"Thank you," King Triton said. "Now peace will return to the sea."

Ariel stared longingly at where the keyhole had been even after it faded from view.

"Sora, tell me," She pleaded, "Your world—what's it like?"

"About that," Sora cringed slightly. "I'm sorry for lying to you."

"It's okay, really," Ariel chuckled. "Besides, if you can travel to so many other worlds, maybe one day I can too," She looked up at the ceiling of the grotto far above them, towards where the sun shone far above the crests of the waves. "So many worlds, so many people. There's so much to see out there. I know I'll find a way to get there someday, and I'll make sure not to put anyone else in danger again doing it."

"Some things never change," King Triton gave her a weary smile, and turned to Sora. "I must give you one last warning, key bearer."

"Huh?"

"If mishandled, the key can bring unspeakable calamity," He warned her. "But it can also be the penultimate force for good. Choose wisely what you do with such a thing, key bearer, and use the key with caution."

She studied him with confusion. None of the trio had confessed to anything about themselves other than that they weren't from the same ocean as Ariel and everyone else here, and Sora hadn't even said where her necklace came from. It was King Triton that could discern her as not even being a mermaid in the first place, and it was King Triton that seemed to know much more about the keyblade and its potential than any of the trio had ever let on.

"How do you know about this?" She asked as she gestured with the keyblade. "How did you know about us?"

"There was a paper that Ariel had discovered not long ago, and excitedly showed me before she realized I did not approve of her hobby," King Triton explained, as he started to scan the shelves for the paper in particular. Ariel eagerly swam to the exact spot the paper was at and, upon pulling it out with a rustling noise, dived back down to hand it to Sora. "Written by another king who had studied the Heart."

"King Ansem?" Goofy asked, and King Triton's eyes widened at him slightly with surprise. Sora and Donald leaned over to read the paper.

"Why, yes," He replied, and continued, "In that text he discussed what another had told him of the key's potential. As for the keyhole, knowledge of it was passed down to me from a long line of previous rulers. I did not know what it could do other than that it was important to keep it secret, but when I saw you three arrive asking after it, I remembered the warning of King Ansem and what that key could wrought, and I deemed it best to feign ignorance."

"Gawrsh," Was all Goofy could say to that, and Sora looked up from the paper.

"'One legend says its wielder saved the world, while another says that they wrought chaos and ruin upon it'," She recited, and bit her lip. Sora raised the keyblade and watched how it twinkled in the light of the grotto once again.

She had thought it could only be used for good. Sora didn't realize it could so easily go the other way.

"Hopefully you understand my initial distrust of it," King Triton commented. Sora nodded.

"I'll never use it for such a thing," She said. "I promise."

* * *

 **RIKU**

That day, he was woken up not with a repeated tapping of his nose, but with a less-than-gentle shove to his shoulder. Riku's eyes opened with a start at the gesture and he bit back his reflexive anger as he looked over to see a different heartless had woken him up today. _Right,_ he reminded himself, _the little heartless is with Kairi._ It was easy to forget in the haze of having just woken up.

"Don't wake me up like that," Riku ordered it, and the heartless didn't even blink in response. It merely went two-dimensional as it wandered back out of the room underneath the gap beneath the door, its task done. Riku sighed and got ready quickly, before going down to see whatever it was Maleficent wanted.

He decided to make a Dark portal to let him out at the end of the hall to get to the chapel quickly without Maleficent questioning him for overuse of the Dark power, as Riku wasn't really in the mood to listen to lectures on the matter after the incident yesterday. Riku stopped outside the door to take a deep breath and hoped the still-lingering traces of his blush were gone, feeling his face to make sure.

Maleficent regarded him with appraisal as he walked in and sat down, and said, "You're punctual today."

Riku gave a noncommittal noise in response, unwilling to give her room to ask anything more. They both turned at the sound of footsteps wandering into the chapel, and Riku could see it was Captain Hook.

He'd only met him a couple of times before, once in his introduction to all of the members of Maleficent's inner circle after the events of Agrabah, and in the meetings thereafter. Riku could not say he was impressed with the man—he came off as somewhat bumbling and hotheaded, and too busy tripping over his own coattails to accomplish much. When Riku had brought this up with Maleficent she replied, _"It's always good to have a spare."_

He hadn't quite understood what she meant then, but after hearing her true plans for forging the key to Kingdom Hearts it made sense.

"What's the plan today?" Riku asked.

Captain Hook grinned and raised the impeccably polished hook that was his namesake up to the light, so that it gleamed. "Certainly no pleasure cruise, that's for sure."

"What a shame," Riku deadpanned, and did not react to Captain Hook's frown.

"I've received a potential lead on where your dear friend's Heart might be, my boy," Maleficent announced, and Riku saw her expression shift slightly as she watched him remain unchanged at news that would have been cause for celebration just a week ago. "So it might be best for you to not be antagonistic."

Riku was sure she was lying to him again somehow. The images of the Princesses of Heart flashed in his mind again, encased under glass and whatever magic Maleficent had cast. The sight of the empty space among them loomed in his thoughts every day since he had discovered the true purpose of his work.

His hand balled into a fist in his lap.

"And what'll you be doing?" He asked her.

Maleficent raised a brow just slightly.

"I've got work of my own to do, so I'll be gone for the day myself."

The empty space appeared in his mind's eye again.

Maleficent had to be planning something for it, there was no other possibility. But who would go there? What other girl was she planning to take?

He thought of Alice and Jasmine.

And then he thought of Kairi.

 _Nothing is free, Riku._

She was helping him with Kairi for a reason, something far beyond simple generosity. And Riku wouldn't let down his guard until he found out why.

"Fine," He agreed as he stood, and the chair gave a dull sound as its legs scraped against the floor. "But I'm taking Kairi with me. It has to do with her Heart, right? We'll bring her and find out right then and there."

Maleficent was hiding something from him, and Riku wouldn't leave off-world without Kairi again if he could help it. The little heartless was his friend, but he couldn't rely on it to be strong enough to stop Maleficent if she tried anything.

Maleficent pursed her lips at his request for a split-second, almost too fast to see, but it was enough to confirm his suspicion. Maleficent had intended to distract him with this task.

"Fine, but you need to leave quickly," She decided. "You'd best be on your way."

* * *

 **KAIRI**

Other than the brief visits from Riku, most of Kairi's days since the little heartless was stationed in her room were spent observing it.

It didn't do much beyond watching her, at times approaching the bed and giving her nose a tentative poke as if it were still searching for a sign of life. But when Kairi was unable to respond, it walked away and went back to watching her again.

It was endearing, certainly, but that wasn't the only thing about the little heartless that fascinated her. It was the pieces of the Heart within it.

Kairi had never bothered to see beyond into the Heartless the same way she did with people. Her few encounters with them were fleeting, for one, and too terrifying thus far to consider the idea beyond the need to get away.

That is, until this one.

Perhaps it was the fact that Riku could command this heartless, or perhaps it was from watching it behave in such a docile manner over the course of her time with it, but Kairi couldn't bring herself to be afraid of it even if she wanted to. It was a heartless unlike any others she'd seen yet, and its Darkness was familiar. But not like the hooded man's Darkness, that ensconced both of his Hearts, where her memory of it was in a place of her entrenched in a past she couldn't name.

This was a Darkness she knew from a time she remembered, from a Heart she knew well. Kairi was sure of that. But who?

It was a difficult task to recognize a Heart when she could only see half of it, where the Light was gone. The Light had given her a whole picture, a feeling, something to remember it much more easily by. But recognizing a Heart only from its Darkness was like trying to translate a language you only partially knew and half of the words were missing.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps quickly approaching her door, and Kairi saw Riku walk into the room. He spared no glance for the heartless as he made his way towards the bed and scooped up Kairi's body, and adjusted her until he was carrying her bridal-style. What was going on?

"It's okay, you're dismissed for now," Riku said to the heartless distractedly. It looked to him in silent question, and he informed it, "We'll just be going somewhere for a little while, okay? Don't worry, we'll be back soon."

The little heartless bent its head down in an unexpectedly forlorn gesture and Kairi could see Riku giving it a soft smile before it disappeared into a Dark portal. And with that, Riku summoned a Dark portal himself just in front of the door, and they both went through.

They came out onto a harbor somewhere, filled with old-style ships whose sails stretched up towards the sky. It was night, with the moon providing the majority of the light, and gas lamps here and there lit up the rest of the way on the dock Riku carried her along. They were walking towards a particularly large ship trimmed with gold, and a giant carved wooden skull forming the figurehead. On the dome of the skull was marked a red 'X' painted to look like crossbones. Emblazoned on the side of the hull in gilded script read _The Jolly Roger._

"I can't tell you much right now," Riku murmured to her as his eyes darted between the other pirates walking towards the ship and climbing aboard, "But I had to take you with me this time. Maleficent's planning something with you and I couldn't risk it. Sorry about that."

If only Kairi could talk to him, and she would tell him everything. How much of this could have been avoided if that were possible?

Or would it have been like with Sora, and Maleficent would manage to find out regardless and put a stop to it?

Kairi didn't know. But she figured it accomplished nothing to think of what-ifs, and that she should think more on what _was._ What is. What could or would be.

She had told the sleeping boy back in the white room her grandmother's story of hope. The story of how the first Light was obscured by a Darkness that seemed to eclipse everything, that seemed like it would last forever. But it didn't.

The Light lived on in the Hearts of kids like her. Pieces of it bound together to create a new Light that saved everything.

Kairi had to remember that even in the middle of so much despair, in the middle of so much Darkness, there was always a Light. And just because she couldn't see it didn't mean it wasn't there. It was hiding in the Hearts of kids like her, like Riku with his small pinpoint of Light in his Heart even now after following the Dark. Like Sora, whose Hearts Kairi remembered shone with so much Light it nearly blinded her.

If there was always a Light, there was always hope.

And hope was exactly what Kairi would do.

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

°□° Oh snap, you guys, only 4 chapters left (well, 3 if you don't count the short lil epilogue)

Sorry I skipped over Halloween Town. Nothing story relevant would happen with that, so maybe I'll cover it a little bit later on with the ancillary material to this series I'll eventually do. Also sorry this took a couple of weeks, the endgame chapters are kinda heavy comparatively so there's bunches of things to balance!

Notes:  
1\. (˵ ͡° ͜ ʖ ͡°˵ )

2\. (˵ ͡~ ͜ ʖ ͡° ˵)

3\. okay but seriously I'm super surprised people haven't written more fics about the sort of hijinks Riku could have been up to with being able to control the heartless and make them look like Sora.

4\. 'Fifty Things About Sora That Bugged the Crap out of Riku (That He Wouldn't Change for Anything)'. Hmm. I'm halfway (really three-fourths of the way) thinking about making a oneshot series titled exactly this, going into exactly those things (and maybe one thing Riku does that bugs the crap out of Sora that she couldn't change, either) (or maybe make an equivalent list of fifty? I dunno) (I don't think Sora could even come up with fifty things, it doesn't seem in line w/ his character)

5\. Okay, so I know Triton says that the key bearer must not meddle in the affairs of other worlds, but the games never explain *how* he knows that. Such insight would imply that Triton somehow knows A) what keyblades are and what they can do, B) what the keyblade wielder's mission is and what heartless are, and C) that there are other worlds out there and that they are to remain separate (which doesn't make any sense either now that I think about it, because IIRC according to Union-X the worlds were all one world in the beginning) (and if a denizen of a world knows there are other worlds in existence, isn't that meddling already?). I'm not sure, so I kinda cherrypicked what he would know and worked in a sort of explanation for that!

6\. yep, I know you get Ansem Report #9 from dealing with Neverland and Capt. Hook, but the idea that "The keyblade brings either salvation or ruin" seemed particularly pertinent with King Triton's words of the keyblade potentially bringing ruin in this level (and it'd make more sense storytelling-wise as for how he got that information, just sayin').

7\. Ariel's gonna be calling a fork a comb for the rest of her life now (at least until Prince Eric tells her the proper names for everything) I got the impression that mermaids also called their combs 'combs' since in the movies we see Ariel and her sisters all use brushes/combs. Now I've written the word comb enough times that it doesn't look like a real word anymore. Comb comb comb comb comb.

8\. Seriously, if Ariel basically swam 24/7 her entire life, she'd have the endurance of an Olympian. I'm not even kidding, have you seen Olympic swimmers? Consider how Ariel would be probably outcompeting any of them in any event. (she'd also have crazy biceps and shoulders, too, but that part's on Disney for not including that ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ )

9\. I know canonically Sora doesn't have his necklace on him in his atlantica form in either kh1 or kh2, but the necklace appears in every other form he ever comes in, including the pridelands lion form (hmm). And! If the necklace theory is correct, the necklace will play one helluva role in KH3, so it makes sense for the necklace to appear in every form he takes anyways, which makes it interesting that it doesn't appear in the atlantica transformation. Hmmmmm.

10\. If I ever got turned into a Disney mermaid making sure my clamshell top was fused to my skin would be the first thing I'd check, tbh

Okay! Kairi's gonna come up a lot more in the next chapter, so don't worry about that, it's just this one was 18k already and she'd still be kinda in a state of emotional shock at potentially being in a beachy purgatory for the rest of eternity, so she probably wouldn't have much to say to anyone. She needed a while to recoup first.

As always, thank you all so much for your comments/kudos/everything on FFN and AO3. You guys are the stars in my night sky and I love you ( ˘ ³˘)


	11. Chapter 10: Glass Caskets

**SORA**

" _Here, Sora," Ariel called after her as the trio made to leave the grotto for the final time. "I wanted you to have this."_

 _Sora turned to see Ariel had followed her out with her arm extended, and something clutched in her hand. The Ansem Report._

 _The trio were initially tempted to just take the Ansem Report—or, at least Donald was—but after a vote decided against it. It wasn't terribly long, Sora considered to herself, she and the others could probably recite the gist of it to Jiminy when they got back. But now it seemed they wouldn't have to._

" _What? But," Sora looked down at the paper and back up again. "But it's yours. You said so yourself, you don't come by much of humans' books or paper stuff, or even paintings. It doesn't last long in the water. This is priceless to you, isn't it?"_

" _It is," Ariel relented, "But it's priceless to you too. You use these to try and fix what the heartless and people like Ursula mess up, right? I want to help."_

 _She held out the paper towards Sora, who hesitated before she took it._

" _Thank you."_

 _Ariel smiled. "Think of me when you read it. And visit me again one day, okay?"_

 _At this, Sora smiled back._

" _I will."_

She flopped onto the gummi ship floor unceremoniously and gave a strangled groan at the herculean effort of raising her hand towards Jiminy, the soaking wet Ansem Report clutched within it. Sora didn't bother to lift her face as she could hear his tiny footsteps approach her hand. Beside her, Donald and Goofy were in similar states of exhaustion from the nigh-endless swimming.

"My goodness, what's this?" Jiminy inquired. Sora could feel the edges of her fingers brush against the paper as it was taken away and hear the wet peeling noise as it was carefully unfolded. Jiminy gave an excited gasp. "Wow!"

"'s it salvageable?" Donald asked, his already hard to understand voice now nearly unintelligible as he spoke into the floor where he laid face-down. "You can read it?"

"I sure can," Jiminy replied, "Why, it's amazing it wasn't affected much at all by the water. The ink hasn't run one drop."

The trio all gave muffled vaguely enthusiastic cheers.

"I'm gonna go dry this off before recording it, but should I tell the autopilot to take us somewhere else while you guys, uh, take a breather for a bit?" He asked as he stepped out of reach of the growing puddle around them. "Maybe get some towels?"

"Towels. Yes. 'Nother world. No," Sora was too tired to say anything with more syllables than absolutely necessary. "Tired."

"'Nother world _yes_ ," Donald insisted.

"No."

"Yes."

"No!"

"Choose whatever world ya like, Jiminy," Goofy finally spoke up, his voice equally as stifled. "Towels would be nice."

"You got it. I saw the next one on the list was someplace nearby called 'Neverland', I'll set it to that. I'll be back with those towels in a jiffy."

* * *

 **KAIRI**

Riku's back was to her and Captain Hook as he watched the rippling waves stream behind _The Jolly Roger_ through the windows of the captain's cabin of the ship, completely unconcerned with Captain Hook's currently ongoing tirade on what had happened during the day's mission _._

Kairi had seen Riku taking in the room as he disinterestedly glanced around when they had first arrived, his eyes skimming over its glossy wood construction with the red-and-gold carpet that nearly spanned from wall to wall. The upright piano in the corner with its velvet cushioned seat. The desk in the middle of the room with a map of Neverland unfurled atop it and a copy of the Ansem's Report Maleficent had left with Captain Hook. The desk's chair, so carefully gilded and carved it looked out of place next to the comparatively spartan desk. The row of swords and daggers on a rack in the other corner.

Captain Hook hadn't liked it one bit when Riku declared on arrival that he and Kairi would be staying in this room. But he didn't allow himself much room to argue—Riku could control the heartless and Captain Hook was far too reluctant to try, having chosen to scorn the creatures instead. Perhaps it was more accurate to merely call him 'Hook' now, as he didn't have much say in what went on aboard the ship when Riku was there with the heartless to back up his demands.

"I'm sure Maleficent will _not_ be pleased to hear of your behavior today," Hook finished.

"I'm sure Maleficent won't care," Riku replied disinterestedly, as he meandered over to the piano in the corner and pressed down on one of the keys. The noisy push of the waves against the hull was interrupted by a _plink!_

Hook spluttered angrily. The ends of his moustache shook as his mouth bent into an ugly line.

"You refused to help complete the mission. Not even my own men would be so obstinate," His hook had risen over the course of his tirade to the point where it was brandished towards Riku. The silver polish had taken on a multicolored sheen as the hook reflected the room's candlelight and the dispersing cloud of colorful dust that had glittered just outside the window. "Not to mention those contemptible _beasts_ you flaunt just—"

Hook burst forth with an angry yell and his hook still brandished menacingly, having lost his temper before he could even finish his sentence. Until he stopped short.

A Dark portal was suspended on the window beside Riku, who hadn't even bothered turning around or giving any indication he had heard Hook aside from his raised hand teasing along the edge of the portal. A heartless peered out of the portal just slightly, its glowing yellow eyes fixed on Hook.

The threat was unspoken, but Hook heard it just fine.

Hook's face purpled with barely restrained rage at the sight of the heartless, and he stomped towards the door and threw it open.

"Scurvy _brat_."

And with that, Hook slammed the door shut. They could hear his steps click in a rapid beat down the hall.

Riku wordlessly sent the heartless away and shut the portal, before walking back to Kairi's bed as he dragged the piano stool behind him. He sank down onto it. Outside she could see a glittering multicolored dust envelop the ship once more and it slowly began to take flight, the rocking of waves against the hull growing fainter until it stopped. The visage of London was now nothing more than some distant black shapes against the horizon.

"Whatever happened, it doesn't matter," Riku said. Kairi couldn't tell this time if he were speaking to her or himself. It could be both. "This whole thing is pointless anyway. Maleficent's just trying to distract me."

She was a little confused at this. The task itself, from what Kairi had heard of it entailing so far, was almost identical to the others she knew Riku had been on. Capture some girl. Well, she knew this mission required that at least. Usually they had to taint the world's Heart, but Kairi hadn't heard any mention of that from either Riku or Hook. What Riku was saying now must have had to do with what he told her as they were climbing aboard.

As if hearing her unasked question, Riku responded.

"Right, I was going to tell you why I had to take you with me this time," He sighed. "Got off track there for a while, didn't I?"

He pursed his lips.

"I found out where Alice and Jasmine went."

In the wake of such a statement, the silence was deafening. Riku's face tightened as he stared up at the ceiling. If Kairi had any means of control over her body, her pulse would have thundered. His voice wavered slightly as he spoke.

"Maleficent…Maleficent kept them and the others she'd imprisoned in these little glass caskets. That's really the only way I can describe them—they were in these grooves in the walls specially carved out for them under glass, with all this weird black stone growing around their legs keeping them there. Not that that was really necessary, since she'd put them to sleep too. Some sort of magical sleep."

 _Is that where I'll go?_

He then angled his head down. "Maybe I should be thankful that at least they looked peaceful, like she had some scrap of mercy on them. I don't know. Mostly I was just freaked out by it. I'm still mad at myself for not wondering much about where they went earlier than that; I seriously had thought…I don't really know what I thought happened to them."

Riku's expression soured into a grimace.

"I can't believe I actually had the gall to not even consider where they'd gone. I never really forgot about it, but I never bothered to think very much about it either. It's so obvious in retrospect."

He went on, "But anyway, Maleficent must have noticed I was there or something, since she came over not long after I'd walked in. I demanded to know what the whole setup was, what she'd done with them, and—Kairi, you wouldn't believe it. She tried pulling that 'balance' excuse _again_. She thought I'd fall for it one more time. Even after I called her on it, Maleficent still claimed it was about balance for her."

"I asked her what she had talked about with Jafar. Remember? The stuff about the Door and the Princesses of Heart."

Of course Kairi had thought about it. She could barely think about anything else _but_ that, regardless of whether or not she wanted to.

"Apparently the Princesses of Heart were meant to act as part of the key to the Door, and Hook and all of Maleficent's other cronies are supposed to be the other part. Including me. To make the key requires Hearts of Light and Dark, so you can see why the Princesses of Heart were necessary for the Light part."

"As for the Door, that in itself isn't as important as what's beyond it," Riku said. "Somewhere in the worst of a Darkness nobody's ever seen is the Door to something called Kingdom Hearts. Maleficent said there were a bunch of names for it, but that was the most common one. And from what I could understand Kingdom Hearts is basically nothing but Light."

Wait, wait, wait. This was beginning to sound a little familiar.

The memory of her grandmother's story flashed in Kairi's mind.

"Well, not just Light. She said there was all sorts of wisdom in there as well, and power. I really don't want to think of what Maleficent would do with it if she ever opened the Door—I won't let her. I'll make sure of it," His gaze flickered to Kairi guiltily. "I'll find a way to open the Door myself, without hurting anyone like she did. There's gotta be some sort of information in there on how to save you. Something on how to fix this mess between the Light and Dark, too. I'll get to it before Maleficent does."

He didn't speak after that, choosing instead to leave the room shortly thereafter. And as Riku closed the door behind him as he left the room, Kairi's head spun once more with an influx of information and what it could mean.

Her grandmother's story…it was more than just a reminder of hope. It was real.

Kairi agreed with Riku on one thing: Neither of them wanted Maleficent to reach Kingdom Hearts. But they disagreed on something else, she thought to herself as she remembered that worrying lone star of Light in the middle of all the Dark in his Heart.

Kairi didn't want Riku to reach Kingdom Hearts either.

* * *

 **RIKU**

After he left the captain's quarters of _The Jolly Roger_ , his quarters now, Riku sauntered down the quarter deck and gun deck. He couldn't deny his endless amusement at being the de facto captain of the ship. A pirate ship at that—Sora would be so jealous.

Oh. Right.

Sora.

Riku ducked his head so none of the crew could see his cheeks burn. At least nobody knew of the way his Heart gave a pained twinge at the thought of her.

And he made sure nobody knew of his continued spars with the heartless Soras, either.

After that time where he…Riku wasn't sure what that was, but he _refused_ to call it a kiss, Riku had made absolutely sure it never happened again. He reminded himself at several points during each spar to remember this was a heartless Sora, not real, even as he'd gotten better and better with making them imitate her image. The yellow heartless eyes were now a much more human blue, and the black shades that made up their forms were now the same color palette of her clothes. Sometimes Riku forgot—The belt, for example, was yellow one day until he remembered correctly—but he always fixed it quickly enough. But he would make sure he never mistook the heartless as anything other than heartless ever again, even if they looked perfectly human.

Thankfully it was easier now to remember that fact, whenever Riku found himself beginning to slip again: No matter how warm their gazes seemed, their hands were always cold.

In the middle of a bout, a brush here and a swipe there, the chill brought him back to reality. Down from the images of waves and sandy shores in his head and back towards the half-light of the dying sun in Hollow Bastion.

Riku ducked down a hallway and climbed up the ladder he saw at the end. He wanted to see the night sky. It had been while since he had seen any time of day other than sunset, with the last time he had seen stars being the reunion with Sora in Traverse Town.

Ordinarily the fact that _The Jolly Roger_ was in outer space would have posed a problem, what with the lack of breathable air. But pixie dust had some interesting properties—apart from allowing the ship to be capable of flight, it also provided enough of an atmosphere on and immediately around the ship for them to breathe and not be swept away by the vacuum of space. When Maleficent inquired to Hook as to how he was planning to get to London from Neverland—for the two were actually smaller separate worlds that orbited each other rather than one larger one, and Hook insisted on bringing his whole crew and ship along on the mission for some undoubtedly egocentric reason—he laughed.

" _Not to worry,"_ Hook had said, _"I've got something special from a friend that'll help me out."_

It had turned out to be an enormous vat of the stuff, glowing a whole spectrum of hues, that was soon overturned and sprinkled from bowsprit to rudder while Riku was in the captain's quarters visiting Kairi as they made to begin the short journey out of London. Hook never mentioned who the friend was that gave him such a present, if it was a present at all. Riku wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be illicitly gained, Hook seemed just as unsavory as the rest of Maleficent's cohorts.

Riku's eyes widened as he climbed up the last ladder and opened the hatch to reveal endless stars above.

Out along the deck heartless and pirates alike scurried about, though Riku noticed there were more of the former than the latter wandering around at this point compared to when he first boarded, and far up over the deck he could hear a badly played accordion accompany a warbled sea shanty from one of the crow's nests. Riku couldn't help his grin at the noise, as much of a nuisance as it was. Everything was so _real_. He really was on a pirate ship, even if over half of the crew were heartless.

He walked over to the railing and felt the divots and grooves under his fingertips, listened to the clinking rustle of the sails. The din of conversation and footsteps all around.

And the best part of it all…the night sky that was everywhere you looked. No borders around, or below, or above. Just the comforting constancy of the stars' light and the knowledge that even the heartless were under his command on the ship. It was the first time on his journey that Riku truly felt free.

Then Riku remembered—Kairi. She'd love to see the sky.

That is, if she could see it at all. Riku liked to think that maybe she could, even if she gave no indication of being capable, but a small part of him hoped anyways. He summoned the Dark portal without even a blink and stepped through into the captain's quarters.

Everything was exactly as he'd left it, down to the stool that still sat beside Kairi in her bed.

"I've got something to show you," was all Riku said as he scooped her up and summoned another portal. They stepped through back onto the main deck, and Riku laid her down gently so that she was partially seated upright—albeit somewhat leaning over awkwardly—and he sat down next to her against the railing.

"There's so many more stars out here than there are on the islands," Riku said quietly. He looked up, trying to trace some sort of pattern out of the stars, but eventually shook his head. "Even though we pretended to be pirates so much when we were little, I've never been any good at recognizing most of the more complex constellations. Too many stars start to blend together," Riku chuckled. "I always preferred the usual map and compass."

There was no response, and eventually his smile slowly died. Riku picked at a loose chip of wood in one of the floorboards. And then he remembered what he had told her earlier. Or to be more accurate, didn't tell her.

"Right. I forgot to tell you why I had to take you with me earlier, didn't I? And why I thought Maleficent was just trying to distract me with this task," He cleared his throat as he glanced around to make sure nobody was close enough to overhear. Riku wasn't sure where to begin.

"So in the hall where the Princesses of Heart are, with Alice and Jasmine, there's an empty space."

He picked at the loose chip hard enough to pry it loose and started working on the frayed edges of the floorboard around it. "I've been wondering who would go there. At the same time, I don't really want to know, you get what I mean? But," Riku sighed. "It's important. I want to stop her from getting to them, whoever they are. And I'm pretty sure Maleficent knows that."

"So I think that's why she gave me the ability to control the heartless and sent me here. To distract me. Of course, the official reason is that she thinks this Wendy girl might have your Heart and that we're supposed to capture her, but I'm done doing her dirty work. And it's so obviously fake—she's leaving for a task of her own at the _exact same time_ and didn't give me any conclusive answer as to what she'd be doing when I asked later. Suspicious, right? So I told her I'm taking you with me, and I'll get to why in a second, but I knew I made the right choice when she made this sort of face."

Riku tried to imitate Maleficent's momentary grimace, but felt more like he was doing an impression of a cat that had smelled something particularly foul. He stopped.

"Anyways, I had to take you with me because I'm pretty sure she's planning something with you. Like I said when I first brought you aboard. Because a while back when I first started working with her, I mentioned this one guy that helped me out a lot at the start of this whole journey and Maleficent warned me that 'nothing is free'. Which is," He waved his hand uselessly, "Sure, okay. It makes sense. But then she went on to help me out way more than she initially promised: Not just with giving me the ability to control the heartless, but by helping you get your Heart back. Maleficent doesn't seem like the kind of person to just do nice things for no reason, so hopefully you have an idea of why I'm suspicious."

The conversation, as one-sided as it was, died at that point and he leaned back to look at the stars again. Kairi hadn't given any indication that she'd heard anything he said. But that was okay.

It was nice to see the similarities between this world and the islands—Wonderland was a topsy-turvy place that made less sense the more you looked, and the only thing Agrabah had in common with the islands was the sand. Traverse Town was the closest he'd seen yet, but even that was more like some place out of a fairy tale. But it was the stars here, the ocean, that reminded him of Destiny Islands.

Riku almost, _almost_ missed the place. But then he banished the idea from his mind without a second thought. Home was not a home at all, but a prison. It was best to leave the place in the past where it belonged.

" _And it is Darkness that will help you gain the strength and freedom that you seek."_

How right he was.

Before Riku could think on the matter anymore, however, a darting gleam amongst the stars caught his eye. He thought for a moment that it was a shooting star, perhaps, but it didn't fizzle out after a couple of seconds as it should have. It kept going and seemed like it was getting closer. It looked like…a rocket?

" _So you're coming with us, right? We've got this awesome rocket, wait 'til you see it!"_

Riku's Heart skipped a beat and he stood so quickly he nearly knocked Kairi over. "S-Sorry, sorry," He bent down quickly to steady her and looked around. Up on the forecastle the helmsman manning the ship's wheel hadn't noticed a thing. He ran to him.

"Hey," Riku called out, and tried again. "Hey!"

The helmsman turned and flinched almost too quickly for Riku to notice. "Aye, sir?"

Sir. _Sir._ It was one thing to be regarded with authority by creatures like the heartless, and another thing entirely to have it come from other people. Riku felt a pleased rush at the title. He could get used to this.

"See that trailing star up there?" Riku said as he pointed towards the rocket, and the helmsman followed his hand. "It's a rocket. I need you to get us to it."

"Um…What's a rocket, sir?"

"Never mind that, just steer the ship so we can intercept its path."

"Alright then," The helmsman followed the order hurriedly, and Riku could feel the ship start to change direction. The helmsman peeked at him with some nervous curiosity. "What'll we be do when we get close, sir?"

Hook would probably come out in a little while to demand an answer as to why they were changing course, but Riku couldn't really care about that. Not when Sora could potentially be right there, right in front of him, in such a short time. The real Sora.

"We're going to capture it."

* * *

 **SORA**

The trip to Neverland was supposed to only take about a day, but somehow the time had passed both in a pained eternity and the blink of an eye.

Sora woke slowly, and while the exhaustion wasn't as bad as when the trio initially flopped onto the gummi ship, every part of herself still felt like lead. It hurt to move even a finger. The next thing she noticed was that the puddle was gone, her clothes dry—as per the Fairy Godmother's enchantment—and Donald and Goofy had gotten up and went elsewhere in the gummi ship at some point when they had woken up. At some point, Goofy had replaced the towels Jiminy had draped over the three of them with a blanket. A pillow had been pushed under her head.

She gritted her teeth at the struggle to sit upright. Donald and Goofy must have taken potions or something to be able to move any more than a crawl, Sora figured. She decided to pull an ether from her pocket and do the same. The results were instantaneous, and she made her way to the cockpit after stashing the pillow and blanket back in the closet.

"Hey!" Goofy greeted her as she made her way into the room, and Sora could see Donald was already busy with the controls. Jiminy was probably still trying to transcribe the report after finishing drying it. "Did ya have a good sleep?"

"Yeah," She answered as she buckled herself in. "Needed some help getting up, though. I guess you guys did the same. Are we there yet?"

"Obviously not," Donald snorted. "It's coming right up, we'll be there in about an hour."

"Fine," Was all Sora said as she turned to watch the stars pass by slowly in the window.

It felt like another eternity passed by before she lost her patience. "How about now?"

"No," Donald said. Yet another eternity passed, within the span of two minutes at the most.

"…Now?"

"Don't make me turn this gummi ship around."

Now that was just silly. "Turn it around to where? We gotta get to Neverland anyway."

Donald made a short series of broken off noises like he was trying to formulate some sort of a response, before deciding on a put-upon sigh. Goofy looked as though he were going to step in, before his eyes flickered to the windshield and did a doubletake.

"Hey, uh, guys?" Goofy pointed. "I think there's a big ship catchin' up to us."

"Like a gummi ship?" Donald asked, but his question was answered in the next instant as an enormous, sparkling seafaring ship circled around them. They spied the skull as the figurehead with its crossbones 'X' on its crest.

"Is that a _pirate ship?_ " Sora exclaimed, and would have unbuckled her seatbelt to get a closer look before Donald gave her the fiercest glare she'd seen from him yet.

"Quit gawking," Was all he said. She settled for leaning as far out of her chair as she could go. Donald swung the controls as he tried to steer away from its trajectory. But, as they soon noticed, the ship followed.

"I think it's going to ram us!" Sora remarked excitedly.

"It's trying," Donald grated as he forcefully yanked the controls far in the opposite direction to try and get away. But still the ship pursued them.

"We're about to get in a fight with some real-life pirates! _In space!_ "

"I'm trying to avoid that!"

"I don't think ya can, Donald," Goofy supposed.

Donald turned his glare onto him next.

"Don't tell me what I can't do," He said, before flicking several switches beside him in short sequence. And with that, the gummi ship burst forth in a speed Sora had never experienced before as the trio all were thrown backwards in their seats. Her fingers gripped tightly at the armrests, and Sora swore she could even feel her face get squished slightly by the blinding speed they were going.

But then, the trio saw as they hurdled closer to Neverland—or what looked like the ocean of it—the pirate ship reached a new speed as a glittering cloud poured out over its exterior. And slowly it began to catch up to them.

But funnily enough, contrary to Sora's initial guess that the ship would ram theirs, it did nothing of the sort. Instead, the group saw it come closer, and closer, until it was near enough for Sora to begin to see the individual wooden planks that made the floorboards of its deck and the patches covering holes in the sail. And with that, the gummi ship had halfway fallen the rest of the way onto its deck. Sora could see the metal helm of _Highwind_ had left gashes in the ship's construction, and came close to leaving a hole in the walls of its forecastle.

"Well that was a bust."

None of them disagreed with Donald.

"Maybe they're gonna be peaceful?" Goofy hoped aloud. Sora gave him a disbelieving look.

"A peaceful pirate?"

But before he could respond, another voice could be heard even through the windshield into the gummi ship. It turned out to be coming from a tall man enrobed in a scarlet knee-length coat trimmed with gold, with a matching plumed hat skewed just slightly on his head. A sword glittered at his side, matched by the silver hook that replaced his left hand.

"Come out," He crowed. "I'm Captain Hook, and you're all now prisoners of _The Jolly Roger._ "

* * *

 **KAIRI**

Kairi had been so excited with the prospect of the story she remembered so fondly being something more than a story, being _history_ , that she had barely been able to pay attention to what Riku had said when he brought her out on the deck to see the stars.

An empty space in the hall where the Princesses of Heart resided. One that Maleficent sought to fill.

Was it a Kairi-shaped space, perhaps?

The grim humor made the corner of her lip quirk up as she slouched against the wall in the white room. It was a sad smile, but it was the first smile Kairi had at all in a while.

She figured that maybe she should treat the situation with a little more gravity—Maleficent would attempt to take another girl today, and if she succeeded then her plans would get that much closer to fruition. After all, Maleficent admittedly had a rather good track record so far: Whatever she sought, she got.

That is, except for Kairi's Heart.

It had evaded Maleficent for the better part of…however long it had been now since Kairi's body was found. The matter of keeping track of how many days had passed in a place like Hollow Bastion was easier said than done, with its perpetual sunset. As if Maleficent herself had lassoed it and kept it right where it was for some undiscernible reason. But if she was capable of such a thing, to poison an entire world and repurpose it for her own methods simply because she could, how was it still taking her this long to find Kairi's Heart and forge the key to Kingdom Hearts once and for all?

Then again, it wasn't as if Maleficent was impatient. According to the man in the hood she had been at this for a decade. And for someone like her, a fairy whose age could be beyond counting, that time may have passed without her even noticing. She had all the time in the world, and the next world, and the next after that. And so on.

But, Kairi reminded herself, there was still hope. Even in the deepest of that Darkness that encircled the worlds, there was still pinpricks of Light that saved everything. Even as the first great Light—Kingdom Hearts, she knew now—slept, and continued to sleep. And there was still that one star of Light in Riku's Heart, as miniscule as it was.

There was a Light in every Darkness.

 _Stop Riku and Maleficent,_ Kairi had told Sora. _Save Jasmine._ Her attempts to interfere didn't exactly pan out that time. But Maleficent wasn't here. And she couldn't stop Kairi from learning of her agenda for today. And, like with Agrabah, there wasn't much she could do to stop Kairi from telling Sora to get to whoever Maleficent was planning to take before she could get there. Sure, Kairi had no idea who it was exactly, or what world she was on. But Kairi and the trio just might be able to figure it out if they worked together.

The odds were long.

But there were odds.

Kairi smiled again, this time less sad than before. Maleficent could get there and find the girl already gone and the keyhole locked. Now there was another reason to hope.

She flicked through perspectives to her body, momentarily seeing herself back in the captain's quarters bed and Riku and Hook arguing about something else—something about heartless and Hook calling himself captain again?—and to Sora's. Before Kairi could reach further, to project herself in Sora's sight, she noticed something.

Sora, along with Donald and Goofy, were busy fighting heartless on the deck of a ship under the stars. The deck of a ship Kairi could swear she saw just minutes before. That she was seated at just minutes before.

Kairi checked the details more closely when she could: Amidst the swipes of a keyblade and alternating bursts of magic from both Sora and Donald, Kairi noticed the distinctive shapes of the railing beams of the deck. The carved pediments of the doors on the forecastle. The gas lantern swinging back and forth on its cast-iron mount. The patched white sails. The carpet of stars above, with an ocean supporting the ship now instead of twinkling light.

Sora was _here._ She was here on this ship, on _The Jolly Roger._ Right now.

Kairi's mind kicked into overdrive with possibilities: She could appear in Sora's perspective and warn her about everything. Even better, she could tell her exactly where Kairi's body was and to take it with her _please Sora please take me with you._ Then they could have a little more time to work against Maleficent's plans. And that man in the hood! They could avoid them both with hopping from world to world, Maleficent hadn't cast any magic on Kairi's body anyways, there'd be no need to worry about a tracking charm or whatever she called it, they could make a plan—

While thinking of the possibilities of this situation, Kairi had switched back to her own body suddenly. This time without her actively doing so.

Well, then. That was new.

Nothing she could see had changed, apart from the captain's quarters being devoid of both Riku and Hook. Kairi was still carefully laid out on the bed, the piano stool still beside her.

But there was one thing, Kairi realized, that she could _feel_ had changed.

Her pulse. It had quickened in response to her excitement.

Her body had not changed one bit since this whole thing began. Not even when she first tried to move and realized she was trapped in her own body did it deign to respond, her pulse then just a slow plodding pace that did the basics and nothing more. There had been no quick and shallow breaths from her lungs, no raising of the downy hairs on her arms or any goosebumps, when Kairi had panicked at being trapped in the white room, the fake play island, forever. Where Kairi's mind was a whirl, her body was practically frozen in time. But that wasn't true anymore.

Now her body had begun to respond.

* * *

 **RIKU**

He had to admit—it was a little worrying how it was taking so long for Sora to resurface from below deck.

Riku had wanted to see how she would fare without those 'friends' by her side, the duck and the dog. Hook's dwindling crew was not much help in the fight, as the last of them disappeared the minute Riku's heartless were unleashed. They must have bowed out. The crew had been unsettled by the creatures, it was obvious by the way they gave them a wide berth whenever they walked past, and the way they threw the heartless darting fearful glances. The prospect of having their glowing yellow eyes and gnarled claws turned onto _them_ must have been the last straw.

Cowards. It wasn't as if the heartless were going to hurt their own comrades, Riku would have made sure of that. He already had made sure of they wouldn't harm Wendy. Didn't the crew know they were harmless so long as he was around?

And then Riku realized something: they had looked at _him_ the same way they looked at the heartless. The fearful glances, the slight pitch in their voices whenever he addressed them. 'Sir'. The Dark part of his Heart had swelled with pride at their fear and resultant respect.

But another tiny part of him felt…ashamed. Sad.

Riku had looked at someone exactly like that once.

He held his arms and felt his fingers drift up and down his skin. He remembered where silvered scars had once lingered, and the ghosts of bruises resided beneath the sinew, deeper than bone. Memories engraved with pain that he still reminded himself of whenever he had to summon the Dark. Memories of his father.

But Riku was not him. He _couldn't_ be him. He was doing all of this for a just cause, he had even taken Kairi along to make sure nothing would happen to her at the hands of Maleficent. He was trying to stopMaleficent, even. He was trying to end the tyranny of Light.

He glanced over at the heartless still wandering the deck, their antennae twitching at random. They were harmless and wouldn't do anything unless he commanded them to. He knew the heartless were capable of being agents of pain and terror. Riku had seen it in Agrabah. But that didn't mean he was the same as them, just because he commanded them. Right?

Right?

Riku glanced down at Kairi, where she was slumped over on the forecastle floor. It had been easier to position her upright this time compared to earlier when he had tried to show her the stars.

" _I need your help in giving Sora a reminder of what's truly important," Riku had told Kairi as he scooped her up from the bed before stepping through the Dark portal. "Us. Her real friends. Not some…some replacements."_

Riku knew Sora was strong enough to make it through the heartless he'd sent after the trio. He'd seen how she wielded _(his)_ keyblade. So to do the same without that stupid duck and dog by her side should be nothing.

 _("Come on, Sora. I thought you were stronger than that.")_

Besides, it wasn't as if the heartless killed the duck and the dog. Riku had given them strict instructions to separate the three and take them prisoner. So the other two were just locked up in one of the now-abandoned crew's quarters, and Sora would be walking out onto the deck any minute now hopefully.

And finally, she did.

Riku heard her before he ever saw her, as her footsteps made dulled thuds across the floor of the deck. The same shuffling walk with the slight bounce that hadn't changed one bit across her journey, and the second he recognized it Riku felt as if every corner of himself came to life. He wasn't aware that he had straightened his posture and nervously ran a hand through his hair until he felt it running through his gloved fingers.

The rest of her came into view and Sora paused when she noticed the heartless skulking around.

It was an interesting experience—and not unpleasant, if he had to be honest—to watch the real Sora walk and look around after his time with the countless fake Soras. To watch her walk and turn her head and search the deck without Riku having to order a heartless version to pretend.

Until Riku figured out that she was searching the deck for the stupid duck and dog, and not her real friends. Did Sora even realize he was on the ship too?

"I didn't think you'd come, Sora," Riku spoke up.

She turned and saw him at last. He could hear her small gasp across the deck, over the sounds of the ocean's waves and the rustling of the sails in the wind. Like every cell of himself and corner of his senses were attuned to Sora.

"Good to see you again," Riku said, and it was the truth. He took a step towards the railing. She looked around again.

"Where are Donald and Goofy?" Sora asked. "Where did you take them?"

He gnawed on the inside of his cheek. Here Riku was, so desperate to see her even after she'd cast him away for misconceptions. He who had made replicas to fill the void shaped like her in his Heart. And those were the first words out of her mouth upon seeing him again.

"Are they that important to you," He walked closer, and pressed into the railing. His fingers clenched onto it tightly, and Riku knew that under the gloves his fingertips were turning pink, then white as his grip clenched more. "More important than _old friends?_ Instead of worrying about them, you should be asking…"

Riku moved aside so Sora could get a better view of the girl she'd left behind. The girl who needed their help most of all.

"…About her."

Sora turned around entirely at the sight of Kairi slouched over on the deck.

"Kairi!" She called out.

 _Finally_. Took her long enough to show even a shred of concern.

"That's right," He gestured, and Sora looked bewildered at Kairi's lack of any signs of life. "While you were off goofing around, she's been stuck like this. Comatose. Maybe if her _friends_ were by her side, we'd be able to find a way to fix whatever's wrong."

Sora tried to run to Kairi. But before she could make any significant headway, Hook appeared out of a Dark portal with his namesake held out to block her path. Riku saw the nearly imperceptible shiver run up his spine: Clearly Hook didn't have much experience yet with the chilling feeling of the Dark portals. No wonder he had insisted on taking _The Jolly Roger_ for such a simple task, then.

"Not so fast," Hook jeered, "No shenanigans aboard _my_ vessel, girl."

Riku squinted at his choice of words but didn't bother saying anything. He decided it was best to leave Hook to his own ego for now and deal with him later. Out of the corner of his eye Riku could see the heartless begin to gather around, and Sora shifted from foot to foot. _(His)_ keyblade appeared in her hand.

Riku could tell the heartless were reacting to it slightly with their antennae twitching more, their claws flexing. Even he was reacting to the sight of _(his)_ keyblade in her hand, with his grip on the railing tightening until he could feel splinters start to poke through his gloves.

"Riku, why are you siding with the heartless?" Sora asked. Her tone was laced with a desperate sort of anger, more sadness than fury. There was a twisting in his gut, then, and Riku couldn't tell if it was guilt or anger. It could be both.

"The heartless obey me, Sora," He replied. "Now I have nothing to fear."

And that was a lie. He had plenty to fear—Riku feared the prospects of never finding Kairi's Heart, never seeing the man in the hood again, never getting back _(his)_ keyblade, never defeating Maleficent. He feared that he would never fulfill his mission to fix the balance between Light and Dark.

And now he was afraid (though really, it was one of his oldest fears) of ever becoming his father too. Or his mother, for that matter.

Riku was afraid of being anyone else other than Riku. And he was afraid of being anything else other than good. Such were the two things he was afraid of most of all.

"You're _stupid!_ " Sora exclaimed, "Sooner or later they're going to swallow your Heart!"

Riku could feel himself redden with anger at that. He was the stupid one? Him, the one who knew better than to follow Light, and the only one of the two of them making any effort towards helping Kairi.

Stupid. Really?

"My Heart's a little too strong for that," He said, with a little more bluster than necessary. She slowly shook her head at him in disbelief. Riku gritted his teeth.

Fine. If hearing isn't believing, he thought to himself, then perhaps seeing is. Riku would just have to _show_ her how strong his Heart was now.

"You're not the only one who's learned some fancy new tricks. I'll show you a few I've picked up along the way myself," Riku continued. "Like _this,_ for instance."

With a wave of his hand, her shadow came to life. Riku couldn't deny the way his ire shifted to a Dark satisfaction when Sora fearfully gaped at the sight—A mirror image all in black, without even the characteristic yellow eyes that heartless usually had. It was the easiest one he'd made yet, given that all he had to do was transform the heartless to look exactly like the gaping chasm Sora had left in his life.

She stepped back from it, and Riku saw her feet settle onto one of the trapdoors the crew had used for traversing between their quarters and the main deck. How convenient.

"You can see your friends now," He quipped as the heartless shadow kicked open the trapdoor and Sora fell with a shriek down to the crew's quarters, now the prisoner cells. If she were lucky, maybe that stupid duck and dog would be there to catch her.

Riku jutted his chin towards Hook and ordered, "Let's get under way, already."

Hook scowled in response, but Riku didn't see it as he summoned a Dark portal and kneeled down to pick Kairi up to take her back to the captain's quarters. Riku didn't care what Hook thought, anyway. And then a thought came to him—Now that Sora saw Kairi, and was nearby, she might try to take her. If that were to happen, Kairi would be really out of luck at that point, as she'd be stuck with people that didn't care if she got her Heart back and wouldn't know how to help.

"And keep Sora away from Kairi," Riku added, before he and Kairi went through the Dark portal.

* * *

 **SORA**

"Whoa-a-a- _Oof!_ "

Her first thought was that it was dark. Her next thought was that at least she'd landed on a pile of cushions, it seemed.

Until said cushions began to move.

"Sora? Is that you?"

"Goofy!" Sora cheered, and figured out the cushions she thought she had landed on were instead Donald and Goofy. She quickly rolled off.

"Finally," Donald huffed as he brushed off his clothes and smoothed his feathers back into place. Beside him, Goofy picked his shield back up. It was hard to see them in the low light of the room.

But thankfully that made it hard for them to see her too. Sora could feel the momentary cheer at finding her friends again quickly shift to sadness from, well, finding her friends again. From finally seeing what Riku was talking about when he mentioned Kairi's condition back in Monstro. And from seeing the Dark depths Riku had sunken to.

" _He is pretty unusual, I'll give you that—Not many puppets have Hearts." Riku shrugged. "I'm not sure, but maybe he could help someone who's lost theirs."_

Kairi had lost her Heart somewhere along their journey. And if Riku wasn't careful, he'd lose his soon too. To the heartless.

" _My Heart's a little too strong for that."_

Sora's mind flashed to a faraway memory at the thought, a memory from the time before that fateful day when they'd discovered Kairi on the islands' shore. From a time when Riku wore the necklace that was around Sora's neck now. When a strange woman with a strange name warned Sora that Riku might one day wander the Darkness alone.

Sora hadn't really believed her back then.

How she regretted that now.

If Sora had followed her advice, would all of this have been different? Would Riku have been on the other side of that railing standing beside Sora? Would he be with her now, and they'd be saving the worlds together, and trying to get back Kairi's Heart? And at Monstro—

"Where did you go?" Goofy asked, inadvertently interrupting Sora's train of thought. "Me and Donald have been stuck in here this whole time, those heartless sure got us good."

"The heartless out there are _ruthless!_ They split us up in the fight to pick us off and tossed us in here when they were done," Donald added angrily, "We weren't sure where you'd gone."

"I was tossed in a cell too, but I guess they didn't realize the keyblade can do more than take care of heartless and lock worlds' keyholes," Sora gave them a sly grin, "Turns out, it can unlock any door I want, too."

"No way!"

"Yeah way," She went on, trying her best to feign excitement. "I fought past the couple that were in the corridor and found my way back to the upper deck cuz I was trying to find you, but get this: My friend Kairi, she's right here on the ship with us!"

"Ya don't say?" Goofy replied.

"Yeah, it was definitely Kairi. I finally found her!"

"All right!" Goofy beamed, and then gave a cheerful laugh. "Then let's go up and talk to her!"

Sora's grin slid off her face at the words for just a fraction of a second before she had to plaster it back on again. The real Kairi, not the one she'd seen in quick glances and quicker conversations, didn't look to be in any shape for talking at all. But Sora couldn't let them know how distraught she was at the info, not when they were excited about meeting her too— _Highwind_ ran on happy faces, and they'd need cheer if they were going to be able to make their way though this ship to get back onto theirs. Not to mention trying to take Kairi with them when she was in the grasp of Riku and all his heartless.

 _His_ heartless. That he could command now. That didn't bode well for anyone, least of all Kairi.

And Riku.

" _That's your job, Sora, and I'm counting on you to do it," The woman said as she ruffled Sora's hair with an affectionate smile. "Okay?"_

Even her fake grin threatened to fall off now. She hid it by turning towards the door and making a show of looking out the peephole to see whether the hallway outside was clear.

It, decidedly, was not.

"There's heartless everywhere," Sora groaned as she eyed the Dark shapes skulking up and down the corridor. There was far more of them patrolling now than earlier, and she knew for a fact that the heartless here were more vicious than any the group had encountered yet—which admittedly was a sentiment each of them had echoed at one point or another in nearly every world they'd visited thus far, but it was especially true here. Sora was beginning to run low on potions, and the taste of pancakes had rarely left her mouth since they fought their way through the deck and had gotten imprisoned. But before she could ponder their options someone behind the group cleared their throat.

"How ya doin' there? Looking for a way out?"

All three of them turned to see a boy floating— _floating—_ his way out from behind a stack of crates and barrels in the corner of the room. He did a forward roll through the air and neatly landed on the floor in front of them with a flourish.

If it weren't for his entirely green outfit, he would have strongly reminded Sora of a fox, with his pointed features and wily demeanor. The pointed ears and red hair only increased the similarity.

"Who are you?" Goofy asked.

"I'm the answer to your prayers," He grinned as he extended his hand for a handshake, "But call me Peter Pan."

"It'd be nice to find a way out that wasn't through the hallway," Sora replied as she reached back, "But how would you be able to help? You were caught and thrown in here too, right?"

Just before they could shake hands, Peter Pan yanked his hand back with a bark of laughter. "Me? Hah! Only dummies let themselves get caught. No, I'm just waiting for someone."

She pouted both at the perceived insult and at being left hanging on the handshake, before the second half of what he'd said came to mind. Were there others held prisoner on this ship, too? Had they already gotten out?

"Who are y—" Sora began to ask, before a small ball of light flew into the room and darted right in front of her nose.

"Tinker Bell!" Peter exclaimed as the ball of light sped over to him, "What took you so long?"

As it approached, the light faded just enough to reveal it was actually a glowing miniscule girl with fairylike wings, who then began to communicate with Peter in a language of physical gestures and tinkling chimes. Tinker Bell was impossible to understand for the trio, but not for Peter, and as she talked his eyes lit up.

"Great job on finding her, Tink!" He commended, before turning confused when Tinker Bell went on. "Another girl, huh? We can just get her out of there at the same time…What? No! Tink, I'm not gonna leave Wendy behind."

Donald snickered. "Sounds like she might be jealous."

At this, Tinker Bell rounded on him with a scowl and darted over to give him a swift kick in the bill. Donald yelped indignantly as he held his face in his hand. The second part of what Peter said came to mind: Another girl?

"Tink, come on, wait up," Peter called after her as she made to glide out of the room. She slowly turned back towards him with a tiny raised brow. "Did you at least find another exit?"

Tinker Bell didn't make a sound as she responded, but from the heaving of her shoulders it appeared she gave a sigh. And then, she pointed upward towards the far corner of the room. All four of them looked to see she was referring to the grate along the ceiling.

"Maybe that way we can avoid those heartless guys or whatever it was you called them," Peter mentioned to the trio, before turning back to Tinker Bell with a grin. "Good going, Tink!"

Tinker Bell beamed, both literally and figuratively, in response to the praise. The two floated towards the grate and reached to pry it off, before Sora spoke up.

"Wait, how can we get out that way?" She said as she gestured to the grate, "We can't fly like you guys."

"Speak for yourself," Donald gloated. Sora remembered the vines in Deep Jungle that Donald managed to avoid entirely with the aid of magic, and how he had softened his falls the same way in Traverse Town. She rolled her eyes.

"You could also just teach me that spell," She remarked. Donald scoffed.

"You'd probably accidentally throw yourself into outer space with it."

"Anyone can fly, you don't need any spells to do it," Peter insisted as he reached to grab Tinker Bell, who had seen his hand coming and began to try and fly away before getting caught. She crossed her arms irately when Peter's hand closed around her wings and gave a warning chime. "Just a little bit, Tink."

"Uh, a little bit of what?" Goofy asked. Peter flew over towards them with Tinker Bell still clutched in his fingers.

"To fly, all you need's a little bit of faith," Peter began as he shook Tinker Bell slightly as he dangled her over Sora. Golden sparkles began to rain down and he moved onto Donald, "Trust," He continued as he floated towards Goofy next, with a shower of the golden glitter now covering the trio. "And pixie dust!"

As he finished, Peter leaned back on the air with his hands proudly on his hips. "Now all you have to do is believe, and you can do it."

Sora looked down at her now-glittering shoes and bit her lip. Her misadventures in Halloween Town came to mind, and Sora wasn't keen on reenacting the incident there where she had nearly broken a wrist bone after falling down the spiraling hill the last time she'd tried to fly. And even then she at least had wings on her costume. Here in Neverland, all Sora had were sparkling clothes and far too few potions and elixirs in her pockets to justify risking needing one on a lark. Not with how those heartless had been outside.

Beside her, Donald and Goofy looked similarly doubtful. "Just belief?" Donald asked skeptically. "No magic?"

"Sure," Peter replied cheerfully. "Come on, just try it."

"If ya say so!" Goofy shrugged, and then leapt off the floor as he flapped his arms as fast as he could. "I can fly— _ah-yipe!_ "

His spectacular jump ended with him sprawled out on the floor, and his shield clattered against the floor with a gonging noise. Sora could see the soles of his shoes sparkling as much as the rest of his outfit. Goofy stumbled back to his feet.

"Alright, I, uh," Peter Pan scratched his head with a look of consternation, and he searched around the room. Tinker Bell lit up shined a little brighter to help him see better by as she followed him. He soon came back out from behind a couple of crates with a length of rope and handed Goofy one end of it. "Just hold onto this and I'll pull you guys up the rest of the way."

" _Now_ he gives us the rope," Donald muttered under his breath. And once Peter yanked off the grate and went through with Tinker Bell, they began the climb into the next room.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

Wendy was pleasant enough to be around, Kairi supposed, even in the midst of such an unpleasant situation.

 _It wasn't long after the discovery of Sora's proximity that Kairi found herself stuck in her own body, the pulse of which was now quickening further with her glee of discovering it responded to her—that was technically not a good thing at all, she knew, as going back to her own body meant Maleficent could right now theoretically take her Heart properly. But even with this in mind Kairi didn't bother trying to subdue her own joy at even something as small as her heartbeat speeding up. She hadn't had much to be happy for in a while, anyway._

 _And even if she was stuck in her own body, it was far better than only being able to see through the eyes of someone else's. And it was_ infinitely _better than being able to walk and talk, yet imprisoned on a simulacrum of childhood memory with only a sleeping stranger for company._

 _That is, until Sora must have strayed far enough away on the ship or something, for the next thing Kairi saw was the white room that fake play island again._

" _No," She breathed as her nails dug into her palms, "No, please, take me back."_

 _Kairi squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated, and saw that Sora was in one of the lower decks somewhere being forcefully shoved into a cell by heartless. Her arms and legs were littered with gashes as she rifled through her pockets the second the door closed and the room was bathed in darkness. But her ability to see through Sora's eyes, Kairi noticed, was a little unfocused. Sora's sight was overlaid by the visage of the white room's walls and the boy on the pale throne, like a television with a faulty signal._

 _The view within her own body, however, was perfectly clear. But Kairi then noticed that her pulse had begun to slow down to its previously lethargic pace with the lack of proximity to Sora._

 _If she could, she would have sighed. But before she could think more on the matter Kairi heard footsteps approach the door to the captain's quarters of the ship._

 _It was Riku. He traced his hand through the air in a vaguely circular motion, and Dark smoke trailed out the tips of his fingers before settling into a Dark portal. And then he reached to scoop her up once more, saying, "I need your help in giving Sora a reminder of what's truly important."_

" _Us," He clarified as he made to step through with her. "Her real friends. Not some," Riku's voice faltered. "Some replacements."_

 _The next thing Kairi saw was that they were on the forecastle of the upper deck, which was now nearly empty save for a couple of heartless on patrol._

 _Real friends? 'Replacements'? Perhaps Riku would have been better off with a reminder himself that the Dark was not to be trusted, that Sora's Heart was big enough for more than just them. But Kairi wasn't able to say anything at all, and so they both stayed silent as they watched the bobbing of waves along the ship's hull. Kairi thought she might have seen the back of a dolphin crest above the waves for a second, but it vanished as soon as it appeared._

 _And when Sora finally resurfaced, Kairi caught sight of her expression before she turned her head away in search of something. She looked…sad. Scared. Desperate._

 _It was then that Kairi starkly remembered her and Sora and Riku were just kids, though the three of them had liked to think otherwise. The fearful yearning on Sora's face made Kairi realize they were all three just kids shuddering under the weight of worlds._

 _And later on after the end of the reunion, after Sora had fallen down the trapdoor and Kairi was left behind once again on the bed of the captain's quarters, Riku came back for her. This time, he said nothing as he summoned another portal and picked her back up._

 _Inexplicably, he put her down her on the floor of one of the prison cells. Sitting in front the adjacent wall was another girl slightly younger than Kairi, wearing a pale blue nightgown with her hair done up neatly in a matching bow. After that, Riku sat down on the floor himself with his legs crossed and stared at Kairi intently. Like he was waiting for something to happen._

 _The girl glanced at the two of them with some confusion. "Hello?" She ventured cautiously._

 _Riku didn't bother looking over. "Hey," He replied distractedly. "Don't mind us, I'm just testing a theory."_

" _Theory? Of what sort?"_

 _Riku gave no response but a noncommittal hum and continued staring at Kairi. She wasn't sure what he was looking for. In quick flashes she could see Sora having met back up with Donald and Goofy and by now she'd also met another boy that was on the ship as well. They were fighting their way through the underbelly of the ship with their path lit by a glowing thing that darted around, but then after another glimpse Kairi could see no more. Her pulse raced again, unnoticed by Riku._

" _Nothing, huh?" He sighed as he stood back up. His hand danced along the first vestiges of another Dark portal. "Maybe it just needs more time. I'll be back."_

" _Goodness," The girl remarked, blinking in surprise at the sight of the Dark portal curling up and away from existence. She glanced back towards Kairi. "I don't suppose you know what that was about, do you?"_

Long story short—she hadn't. And Riku hadn't come back yet from whatever they were doing. Which left for a somewhat awkward silence as Wendy (she had introduced herself shortly after Riku left, but further attempts at conversation tapered off when she realized Kairi was unable to reply) sat on one side of the room and Kairi on the other.

Kairi knew Sora had to be getting closer. There were more and more small signs of life from her body, signs that would be completely imperceptible to onlookers: Her pulse began to race, and sped up faster when she realized it happened. Kairi was able to take slightly faster or slower breaths. And she was almost, _almost_ able to twitch her eyelids. Almost.

A rustling noise made them both look over towards the netting in the floor by Kairi, and the next thing she heard were multiple sets of footsteps. Her pulse raced again, and now began to flutter like wingbeats. That had to be Sora and her friends.

A tinkling chime came next, and then a boy's voice asking, "What is it, Tink?"

Wendy sat up straighter at that. "Peter?" She rose to her feet and walked towards the netting. "Peter Pan?"

"Wendy!" He replied. Kairi could see a bright light get closer to the netting out of the corner of her eye, still making that chiming noise in a cluster of tones as if in communication. She desperately wished she could turn her head to look, but all she could do was feel her pulse start to pound and her hands itch with the desire to move.

Wendy's face nearly split in two with her relieved grin, and she bashfully covered her mouth with one hand as she kneeled down at the edge of the netting in the floor. At that moment, there was a scuffling noise from somewhere outside the door. Wendy's smile left as quickly as it arrived. She looked back and forth between the door and Peter.

"That must be the pirates," Wendy supposed with another fearful glance. "Please hurry with whatever you're planning, Peter. I don't know what they're going to do with us."

"I'll be right up there, just hold on!" Peter then took out a short dagger and started sawing through the ropes in the net. There was another scuffling noise, then, both from outside the door and from somewhere in the rest of the group below the net.

"Wendy?" That was Sora that said that. _Sora._ Kairi was able to twitch her eyelids more now, and nearly blinked. Her heart was going a mile a minute.

"Yes?"

"Is there another girl in there with you?"

At this, Wendy looked up at Kairi. "Why, yes," She replied, "But she seems to be asleep. She hasn't budged an inch."

She could hear what sounded like several crates being moved around at the reply, and then Sora's voice was much closer.

"Kairi? Kairi!"

Wendy got up to check on the chest of drawers she had managed to blockade the door with once she heard the shuffling noise outside again, but Kairi could barely hear it. Her pulse was now thundering in her ears and she could feel it down to her fingertips and toes. Sora was so _close._ She was right there, and Kairi struggled to try and speak beyond pushing air out her nose a little more forcefully. Her fingertips just barely began to twitch.

Just trying to move her hand was like trying to lift a mountain, or hold up the sky, and Kairi could feel the muscles in her arms start to writhe with the effort of finally trying to follow what she wanted so badly for so long. She could move. _She could move._ Just barely, but it was vastly better than all the nothing she had before. It was like her joints were rusted, and silently creaking with the effort. Kairi's lungs began to shudder with the excitement.

Kairi did not think then about how having her real body back, even the tiniest bit, was not a good thing at all. She did not think about how if Maleficent were there that she could steal her Heart and all the worlds would end. And she did not think about the danger they were all in on this awful ship. All she thought was _sora Sora SORA I'm right here right here right here I'M RIGHT HERE I'M RIGHT HERE PLEASE REACH BACK PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE—_

Her hand moved. _Her hand moved._ And for one earth-shattering instant, both Kairi and Sora held their breath.

Kairi stared after her jostled hand and nobody spoke. She could feel the coarse rope of the net scrape against the back of her hand, and it was so much more marvelous than anything else she'd ever felt: Better than the weight of a present against your palms, or the feeling of finally going to bed after the longest days of your life.

For the dull scrape of the rope against her skin translated into the feeling that maybe things could turn out okay in the end. And then she felt the small uptick of hope in her Heart, the first stirring of anything from there in an eternity.

The next thing she felt was a small drop of something wet on her face, and Kairi realized it was a tear.

Kairi could cry. She could _move_ again, and she could cry again. She felt the whisper-soft close of her eyelids in relief. The tear slid down her cheek and Kairi wondered if this was what a miracle was supposed to feel like.

She didn't hear the rush of a Dark portal open. She didn't hear Wendy's yelp as the heartless grabbed her and took her through. She didn't hear Sora cry out in anger when the heartless reached for Kairi, too.

But she felt the sharp grip of the heartless pulling her through the Dark portal, and Kairi realized the feeling of once-singing nerves now going silent again was not the feeling of a miracle at all.

It was the feeling of being cursed.

* * *

 **RIKU**

" _What?!_ " Hook howled, and Riku could see Wendy flinch at the racket from where she sat on the far side of the room on the bench. "What do you mean, 'it was pointless'?"

"I mean that Maleficent's theory didn't pan out," Riku sighed, more at Hook's aggravation than any sort of disappointment at the lack of results. He had expected this sort of thing, after all. "Wendy doesn't have Kairi's Heart, so there's no reason to keep her here. Send her home."

"I—Wha—But all that work!"

He rolled his eyes. It only made Hook angrier.

"Now _listen,_ you pilfering mongrel," Hook raised his namesake threateningly once more as he stomped forth. Riku's fingers teased along the edges of another Dark portal, ready to call on another heartless for something a little more severe than a threat this time, but Hook used his hook hand to neatly catch his wrist and pull it down. Riku's eyes narrowed dangerously. "It was one thing when you took my quarters and brought those vermin with you, it was another when you tried to take my ship and title—" _What do you mean, 'tried'?_ Riku thought to himself, "—But you've done nothing but think lowly of me and my men and reap the rewards of _our_ efforts! A pirate's work is his whole reason for being, you brat, and I will not tolerate you disrespecting that!"

" _I've_ done nothing but think lowly of you? Why do you think? And there's nothing to take credit for but the fact that all you've done so far was capture some innocent girl for a half-baked scheme that Maleficent assigned us for a distraction! Your 'men' have done nothing at all!" Riku spat and whipped his hand out of Hook's metallic grasp.

"They helped you catch up to the infernal machine the keyblade brat and her lackeys run around in!"

"Wow, so they helped steer a ship and make it go a little faster, big whoop. They didn't do a single thing afterwards!"

"Because your heartless _ate them!_ " Hook roared, and Wendy did not flinch this time. She now sat perfectly still as she watched them both with wide eyes. "They made them into more of your little pets!"

Instead, it was Riku that flinched at his words.

How could the heartless have eaten them? Riku never remembered seeing anything—then again, he wasn't looking for any people being forced to turn into heartless specifically—and he'd ordered them to not touch Wendy. He hadn't explicitly _said_ not to touch anyone else, but Riku thought that was implied well enough. The heartless certainly took implied directions perfectly well, the heartless Sora did back at Hollow Bastion—

Riku could feel the flush rising in his face at the thought of the incident, and he bit his tongue to distract himself. The point was, the heartless were supposed to listen to him. And they had. Right?

So why did they stop now?

Riku looked over at the nighttime ocean, at the almost overly bright moon far beyond the window that left silvery smears on the tops of the waves. He swallowed hard against the taste of bile at the edge of his mouth. Maybe…maybe the heartless had ceased to listen to him before today. Maybe even the little heartless ceased to listen to him on watching over Kairi whenever he was gone, and…

Riku hurried over towards Kairi, completely ignoring Hook's resumed ranting. She seemed perfectly fine. Untouched. But Maleficent was good at hiding things, after all, maybe she had hidden more than just the entrance to the chamber where the Princesses of Heart had gone.

But he inspected Kairi's face further and stopped.

There was a teardrop just under her eye. Somehow Riku had missed it in his initial assessment after recovering her from Wendy's cell. He brushed it away as gently as he could and raised the small droplet on his hand up to the light, to look at it with equal parts disbelief and awe.

Kairi was able to use her body again. Even just a little bit.

If she was able to cry, was she capable of anything else? How did this happen?

And then Riku remembered—Wendy. She was there in the cell with her.

Could Maleficent have been _right?_

"You," Riku addressed Wendy, and she looked over from Hook towards him. "Tell me exactly what happened while Kairi was in the cell with you again."

"I, um, it was just the same as what I said earlier," Wendy stammered, "She didn't move at all, and didn't respond to anything I said. Not long after that those creatures got us back out."

"Boy, you're wasting your time," Hook warned.

"I don't care," Riku barely spared him a glance before approaching Wendy. "That's not everything that happened. I know it isn't. What are you not telling me?"

"There's nothing—I—" She spluttered, and whatever protests she would have made seemed to die in her throat as they only stared at one another in thunderous silence. Eventually, Wendy looked away. "…Peter Pan and Tinker Bell showed up before we were taken here. With some friends."

Hook's eyes glinted dangerously. "Peter Pan?!"

' _With some friends.'_ Riku glanced at the tear again, still held carefully on the tip of his finger. It had begun to dissipate.

"Who else was with him." It wasn't a question, but a demand.

"A girl and two others," Wendy answered, "She looked just like any one of us, but the other two were quite strange. One was a duck, I'm sure, but the other looked something like a…dog? He carried a shield."

Sora and the other two she was always around. Her fake friends. Lackeys.

Replacements for him and Kairi.

"Blast it! That scoundrel Peter Pan, I'll find him and wring his neck with my last good hand," Hook cursed, and stomped towards the door to begin his search. Once the door slammed shut, Riku walked over to Kairi and inspected her again.

Her gaze was still half-lidded and unfocused, her expression slackened. That teardrop had been the first sign of life Riku had seen from her since the islands. If it appeared when _Sora_ showed up…

And then Riku figured it out: Seeing the one who abandoned her, who abandoned both of them, must have tormented Kairi to the extent of even her body showing signs of life. Small, easy to miss, but there nonetheless. Riku could only imagine what the pain must be like on the inside.

He had to get them out of here. Kairi couldn't stay for obvious reasons—He'd figure out how to get her Heart back on his own later, it didn't sit right with Riku to leave Kairi in any sort of proximity to someone that agonized her. He knew personally how awful that sort of thing could be. Riku wouldn't wish that hell on others.

Riku decided he would take her back to Hollow Bastion. He would return with her. Neither of them were safe in a place where he couldn't quite control the heartless as perfectly as he thought. Of course, such a line of thinking could come off as nonsensical, to find sanctuary in the homeof the heartless. But at least there his control had seemed effective compared to here. And if nothing else, Maleficent seemed to have a vested interest in keeping Kairi in good health, even if for her own agenda. She would be safe, and more importantly, away from Sora.

Riku walked over to the wall and formed a Dark portal, and then promptly walked over to pick up Kairi yet again.

"Hey, we're gonna go back, okay? Back to Hollow Bastion," He told Kairi as he walked past Wendy, who was now watching the Dark portal with a look of surprise. "It's not good for you to be here anyways."

From the other side of the room, Riku could hear the trapdoor in the floor swing open and multiple sets of footsteps bustle out. Well, well, speak of the devil.

"Wendy!" Peter Pan cried, and Wendy wrenched her head over and stood up immediately once she saw him. "C'mon, let's get you outta here!"

"Yes, please!" She replied as both her and Peter Pan raced towards the door and out of the room. "Oh, Peter, you wouldn't believe what happened—"

Her voice trailed off, and Riku stepped closer towards the portal. He ignored the sound of Sora's footsteps.

"Riku, wait!" She begged, and with Kairi still in his arms he turned to fix Sora with a cold look.

He could just step through the portal right now and be done with it. And really, he should, there was no sense in wasting time on frivolities. But the Dark part of his mind insisted on giving Sora _something_ , just teach her a little lesson, that's all. You know how Sora is, it spoke. Just give her a taste of her own medicine. Let her learn the hard way about the pain she's wrought on you and Kairi.

The heartless Sora that appeared between them was quicker than any others he'd summoned before, and this time it had a Dark keyblade of its own in its hand. Interesting. Perhaps Riku had subconsciously included his own lingering will to reclaim _(his)_ keyblade that was in Sora's hand even now.

His keyblade, Riku was sure of it now. Riku's, and nobody else's.

But there was no time to deal with that particular matter right now. And so, consoling himself with that thought in mind, Riku stepped through the portal with Kairi.

* * *

 **SORA**

"No!" She called out as she watched them leave.

Sora had finally, _finally_ reunited with Riku and Kairi, had gotten so close…and they were gone. But before she could think any more on the matter, a harsh strike came to her shoulder. It was the heartless copy of her with its own keyblade.

The heartless outside the room, the ones that traversed the deck and patrolled their cells during their imprisonment, those were awful enough to deal with. Their much stronger blows that didn't let up, even when the heartless were halfway disappearing into Dark smoke already, they would still claw and claw and claw. Like they were fighting to the death and wanted to take her and her friends with them. And at several points, they nearly had.

This one was no different, Sora decided as it managed to parry another strike and did a quick thrust towards her leg. If anything, this one was worse. For one very specific reason.

"Am I going crazy," She grunted as it managed to predict her attack and successfully guarded in the _exact same way she did,_ with the same arm raised and the same inclined angle to her head. Even down to the one leg pushed back a little too far that Riku would tease her for sometimes on the islands in their spars. "Or is this thing fighting just like me?!"

"It's not just you," Donald answered as he managed to land a fire spell on the heartless' back. "I thought it would fight more like a normal heartless even with that keyblade!"

"Me too!"

Goofy was the next to attack, as he spun around with his shield's edge held out. He managed to catch the heartless on the back of the head with a dull _clang!_ Sora yanked herself back at the last possible second to dodge the shield, and saw that the heartless had been disoriented slightly by the blow.

Now was her chance. Sora landed three strikes in quick succession on the heartless' head, noting how it began to emit several wafting curls of Dark smoke that joined the others the trio had managed to make earlier in the fight. She leapt back when the heartless began to stumble back to its feet, and would have made to dash towards Sora with its keyblade reared back with promised pain if it weren't for Goofy blocking it with his shield. Sora angled herself out halfway from behind Goofy's shield and fired off fire spell after fire spell, soon joined again by Donald.

They both continued to cast magic until both of their already-low reserves were completely out, and they couldn't tell whether the smoke that ensconced the heartless was Dark smoke from the heartless itself or their fire spells. They stopped when there was nothing left, of neither their magic reserves nor the heartless, and only a badly singed smear on the floor remained.

Sora dismissed her keyblade and felt desperately around in her pockets for an ether, or an elixir, or anything at all. She gave a short victorious cry when she fished out a tiny bottle in the characteristic blue tone of elixirs. The cry quickly died before she drank it when she realized this was her very last one of any sort of help, and judging by the disappointed noise Donald made he was already out of everything entirely.

"Here ya go, Donald," Goofy reached into his pocket and gave an ether to Donald, who took it without preamble. "But I'm running low too, myself. Gawrsh, we gotta be careful."

"Running low's better than running empty," Donald reasoned, and said, "We'll have to get out of here soon, though."

"Guys, we have to see where Riku and Kairi went," Sora begged, "We have to go after them!"

Donald have her a stern glance that was sympathetic around the edges. "If they went off-world, we can't follow them in the gummi ship. We'd be lucky to get back to Traverse Town with the condition it must be in now."

"And if they're still on the ship?" Sora wondered. It was desperate to think it, she knew, but maybe there was a chance.

Without waiting for an answer, she threw open the door and raced out, with Donald and Goofy scampering close behind. Sora darted down the hall and outright shoved away the few heartless she encountered and thought that maybe new ones hadn't appeared after they'd defeated them in this world. Maybe that was because Riku wasn't there to summon any more. She didn't want to think about it.

The trio ran faster. Sora kicked open the last door before getting back onto the main deck, and finally stopped at the sight of the gummi ship still halfway crashed into the forecastle, the open sky above. She searched desperately for Riku and Kairi.

They weren't there. They were gone.

"Riku, don't _go,_ " Sora scrubbed a hand down her face, and tried desperately to distract herself from the prickling feeling in her eyes. First at Traverse Town. Then at Monstro. Now here. "Why do you always have to disappear like that?"

"Sora," Goofy said from somewhere behind, and she could hear his footsteps approach. But before he could do anything, they heard Captain Hook speak from the other end of the deck. Sora looked up to see he was surrounded by the remaining heartless on all sides, and, she realized with a start, so were they.

"Quite a codfish, that Riku," Captain Hook gloated. Around him, the heartless began to shift from foot to foot, their clawed fingertips flexing at their sides as they wandered out of the shadows into sight. "To have run off with that girl without even saying goodbye, don't you think?"

As he stepped closer, the trio could see one other crewmember that had stayed with the captain, a short squat elderly man wearing a striped shirt and red hat with a gash on his hand. Clutched in his grip was a glass lantern that glowed brightly—but not from any flame, they realized. The lantern's glow was from a pixie trapped within it.

"Tinker Bell?" Donald asked, and tightened his grip on his staff. Captain Hook laughed.

"My own supply of pixie dust was running quite low. That Riku boy squandered most of it in the rush to capture your ship," He gave a sneer at this, and stepped down to give _Highwind_ 's slightly battered metal hull a knock with his hooked hand. _That was Riku? Why would Riku want to capture the gummi ship?_ Sora thought with confusion. She'd thought it was Captain Hook who ordered the chase. He continued, "I thought I'd do well to restock the reserves."

"Where did Riku and Kairi go?" Sora demanded, and the keyblade flared into existence in her hand. She stomped toward Captain Hook and ignored the heartless stepping forward at the action. "Tell me where they went _now!_ "

"I'll stake my other hand that he went crawling back to Hollow Bastion, no doubt seeking Maleficent," he replied, and Sora's knuckles went white as bone. "But you probably won't be getting there anytime soon."

"Why?" She asked through gritted teeth.

"Because you're willing to put up a fight," Captain Hook gestured grandly to the heartless all around them, and Sora noticed they were barely restraining themselves. "Once the boy Riku scampered off, I finally tried commanding the heartless I abhorred so much once they tried setting their sights on Smee here _._ They took the rest of my men, true, but I've realized they make for a far fiercer crew. I know you must have struggled to break out of the prison cell. Would you be willing to face them again?"

Sora lowered the keyblade slightly as she traded uneasy glances with both Donald and Goofy. Only Goofy had any potions left, and only Donald had enough magic left in him to cast any healing spells. She glanced around the deck at all the heartless assembled. There was fewer now than their arrival, but still far too many.

"My thoughts exactly," Captain Hook spoke. He went over to the remaining crewmember and took the lantern with Tinker Bell trapped within it. And as he turned back towards them, Captain Hook dragged the pointed tip of his hook down one of the lantern's glass panes, and it made for a horrible screeching sound. The trio could see Tinker Bell's glow dim slightly as she shuddered away from both the racket and the hook.

And then, oddly enough, Captain Hook extended the lantern towards them.

"But I am merciful, unlike the heartless. I'll offer you a deal."

"A deal?" Sora asked disbelievingly. "How can we trust you?"

"You have no choice," Captain Hook grinned. "Your only alternative would be for my crew to attack."

The heartless started to twitch at this, their claws flexing and unflexing, antennae dancing madly. One even stepped forward haltingly, as if fighting against something. Sora was _not_ in the mood to deal with them in the trio's current condition, especially with the heartless clearly being strengthened by the night.

"What's the deal?" She asked, and both Donald and Goofy's heads swerved towards her.

Captain Hook's grin widened. "I'll let you three leave safely on your piddling ship, and I'll even let Tinker Bell go."

Sora furrowed her brow at that. "Didn't you say you need her?"

"Ah, but you haven't heard the other half of my proposal yet. You see, in exchange I want that keyblade: Surely beyond the Door there's another way to have a flying ship, and a great deal of other riches and power to be gained instead. Compared to that, what's a little bit of pixie dust?"

Sora went quiet, and she could tell it worried Donald and Goofy from how they were shuffling from foot to foot.

"Sora, don't even consider it," Donald whispered as he tiptoed closer.

"I am," She replied quietly. "I have an idea."

There was a pause.

"You can't be serious," Donald hissed finally, "Giving up the _key?_ "

"We can't let Tinker Bell be grinded into pixie dust or however he gets it!" The thought churned her stomach. She looked up at Captain Hook. "Alright. You have a deal."

His grin widened even more, until it threatened to split his face.

"Excellent."

Nobody spoke as they both walked towards each other slowly, waiting for the other to do anything that would arouse suspicion and call off the tenuous agreement. The only sounds around were the tip-tapping of the heartless' feet on the floorboards of the ship, and the cresting of the waves in the waters all around. Sora could see even Tinker Bell was giving her a look of incredulity, and let out an excited tinkling chime as her wings flapped.

Once he got close enough, Captain Hook reached for the keyblade. Sora yanked it out of reach, saying "Nope, Tinker Bell first."

"Hmm. Fine."

He repositioned the lantern so the handle was held in the metal bend of his hooked hand, and then used his remaining hand to undo the lock on the little door as Tinker Bell pressed up against it and watched him undo the latch. She pushed the door open and spun all around with the loudest chime Sora had heard from her yet as Tinker Bell danced in the air and came down to kiss her on the cheek, before speeding off into the sky at a blinding speed.

That's when Sora realized—Where had Peter Pan and Wendy gone?

"Now the keyblade," Captain Hook reminded her with his hand held out.

Sora took a second to squeeze the keyblade's handle to reassure herself. Back in Traverse Town Yuffie and Leon had taken it from her hand, but they couldn't keep it for long. Only a few minutes after Sora had woken up did it return to her with a blaze of Light. And surely, she thought, it would be the same now. Only after Tinker Bell was safe and the trio had gotten away would Captain Hook realize what happened as the keyblade would disappear from his hand. She held it out, and he took it.

"Good, good," He excitedly looked at it in his grip as the remaining crewmember came up to take the lantern away. "Now make them walk the plank."

All three of them gave angry shouts as the heartless burst forth and shoved them towards the side of the ship, and continued shoving them towards the small gap in the railing where the plank lay waiting outstretched over the ocean. It began to loom in her vision, and she angrily looked over towards Hook as he watched the heartless work with glee.

"Hey, we had a deal!"

"I said _I_ would let you leave safely, do you see me helping shove you brats?" Captain Hook laughed, "I didn't say anything about the _heartless_ letting you leave safely."

"I told you not to even consider it!" Donald fumed at her from where he stood trying to beat off heartless with his staff. To their other side, Goofy tried pushing them away with his shield. All three of them continued to be shoved closer to the plank inch by inch. "You should've known someone like him would pull this stunt!"

"Yeah, well you know what?" Sora raised her arm towards the sky as she could feel the hard edge of the plank press into her back, and the heartless were beginning to pick her up and push her onto it. The keyblade flashed out of Captain Hook's hand and back into her own with a spiraling gleam of Light. "I was just kidding too!"

"You miscreant mackerel!" Captain Hook shouted indignantly as he looked back and forth between his now-empty hand and the keyblade clutched in hers. "I'll finish you off myself!"

 _You'd have to reach me first,_ Sora thought with a sinking feeling as the heartless pushed her onto the plank. Hook pointed his cutlass at her over the heads of the heartless as Donald and Goofy were beginning to be shoved onto the plank as well.

She swung the keyblade in an arc as large as she could, but had to restrict her maneuverability both with having to maintain balance so she wouldn't fall of the plank and not accidentally hit Donald and Goofy either. It resulted in a move that was slightly stilted, awkward, and not at all effective. Sora glanced down.

Below the trio was the ocean, once a happy sight for Sora, turned into a view that was less than assuring. She knew they'd be able to swim just fine, but with no land in sight on the horizon they'd be swimming for who knows how long. And at once she heard two noises: One was a yelp from in front of her, coming from Goofy as his shield rang with a tinny noise that sounded like rain on a metal roof as the heartless threw their claws at the shield repeatedly. The other noise was coming from below, sounding like a…ticking clock?

The trio looked back down and spied a reptilian shape cresting over the waves and settling itself under the plank. Two eyes peered back at them from a distinctively crocodilian head. And then, Captain Hook screamed.

It was no scream of anger that he'd made, or a bellow of fighting rage. Captain Hook's scream was more along the lines of a high trilling shriek that, if Sora had to be perfectly honest, was a little pathetic sounding. He pointed at the crocodile, which Sora realized was the source of the ticking noise.

"S-S-S- _Smee!_ " He called out, and at the crewmember's 'Aye, cap'n?' Captain Hook said, "It's him! It's the crocodile that took me hand!"

She noticed that Captain Hook had slipped into a bit of an accent when he was deathly afraid.

"Oh, Smee! He's after me other hand! I can't stay here!" He sobbed, and took flinching steps towards the barrier as if it would take his remaining hand too. His face wrenched with fear as he caught sight of the crocodile. "Go away! Oh, I can't stand the sight of him!" He yelled at it, his voice turning warbly. Captain Hook then raced towards the remaining crewmember and shoved his cutlass into his arms and continued running, making for the door that led to the captain's quarters of the ship as he yelled over his shoulder, "Smee, you take care of them!"

"Aw, c'mon cap'n," Smee replied, but Captain Hook had already slammed the door behind him. He sighed and turned towards where the trio were still fighting to stay on the plank as the heartless continued battering Goofy's shield, and had now taken to outright throwing themselves at it, with several of them landing sloppily into the ocean. The crocodile didn't mind them as they slowly drowned with their Hearts spiraling towards the sky as they expired, and only had eyes for the trio.

The heartless had pushed against Goofy's shield enough to make the trio back up another step, and Sora found they were at the end of the plank. She could feel her Heart clench uneasily at the crocodile's mouth beginning to open wide. The heel of her shoe stuck out into the open air, and Sora noticed her clothes were still glittering. If anything, they were glittering _more._

She looked up in confusion and saw a ball of light doing figure eights over the trio. "Tinkerbell!" Sora cheered, and the rest of the trio looked up as well with similar applause.

"Fly, Sora!" At the sound of the shout, she looked across the ship's sails to see Peter Pan having returned and soaring towards them. "Just believe!"

She tried stepping another inch back as the heartless continued to push, and barely regained her balance in time as her foot met only air. Sora glanced at the heartless, whose claws were now constantly scraping against Goofy's shield, their antennae nearly blurring from their moving so fast. In the dark of the night, even with the moon bearing down, she saw that the heartless didn't reflect any of its meager light. Nor did they reflect much light off the ship's lanterns. The whole effect came together to make the heartless look like one writhing mass of a beast, with constellations of yellow eyes glowing in the Dark.

And Captain Hook was more scared of a _crocodile?_

Sora shook her head at the thought. And with that, she closed her eyes and tipped backwards. Time began to pass in slow motion, and she could hear the crocodile ticking off the seconds to her demise if she failed.

She thought to herself, _I can fly,_ and it did nothing. She next thought of the first time she flew in the gummi ship, the feeling in her Heart as it lifted off the ground. _I can fly._ It still didn't work, but she could feel her limbs grow slightly lighter. Sora thought of the time when the gummi ship crashed in Deep Jungle and she sailed through the air towards the treehouse. All of her felt a little lighter, now. _I can fly._

Sora remembered that weightless feeling when she fell, like she was a question suspended in the void. Fly or don't fly. Fall and crash…or fall and miss the ground. The fractions of a second ticked by.

She thought of Riku, grinning at her as they stood side by side on the shores of Destiny Island. Not the boy who Darkly smiled down at her on the forecastle above just earlier as he brought her shadow to life. Her now weightless Heart gave a flutter, and then a _flex_ she had never felt before came from the center of herself.

"I can fly," Sora murmured, and it was the truth.

She opened her eyes when she realized she never felt the crocodile's bite, nor the ocean's waves. And that's because she wasn't close to either. Small sparkles of light danced all around her from the pixie dust, and Sora let out a whoop.

"I can _fly!_ " She hollered, and swooped around over Donald's and Goofy's heads, where they both stared at her with bare surprise. "Come on, guys, you can do it!"

"Yeah!" Peter joined in as he and Tinker Bell joined her in circling over them, with gales of pixie dust raining down. Goofy looked as though he was pondering something for a moment, and screwed his eyes shut as the heartless continued pushing against his shield.

He leaped. "I can fly," He cried almost questioningly, and blinked his eyes open when he realized he never landed in the water. "I can fly!" Goofy said much more assuredly and paddled slowly into the air above the crowd of heartless, that now set their sights on Donald.

Donald looked back and forth between the heartless stumbling towards him and the crocodile down below, that now hungrily stared at him. He took a shaky step backward and raised his staff.

"I'm not risking it," Sora could hear him say before muttering a spell, and Donald floated up into the middle of the circle that Sora, Goofy, Peter Pan, and Tinker Bell all were now gliding in together.

"That's cheating," Sora joked, and Donald gave her a deadpan look. She looked to Peter Pan, and asked, "Where did you guys go? And where's Wendy?"

"Wendy's perfectly fine, you'll see," He grinned, "I just had to get her away from ol' Captain _Crook._ I wasn't gonna leave you guys behind when you helped out Tink!" Tinker Bell gave a tinkling chime at his words.

"So uh, guys?" Goofy spoke up. When they turned to him, he pointed down at the heartless. The group saw that the mass of the creatures was writhing worse now, and Smee had abandoned the sword and empty lantern in favor of running to the captain's quarters himself. "What'll we do about them?"

"Not sure if I want to fight them again," Sora shuddered. They were bad enough earlier, and ready to riot now. Even with the ability to fly away from their blows, the heartless' vicious clawing stood out in her memory.

"Just chuck 'em in the water!" Peter Pan suggested.

"Hey, you're right," She replied, thinking of the way they drowned just a minute ago. How the Light of their Hearts matched the stars in the sky.

Everyone in the group shared a grin at this.

And then they dove as one.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

Another tear leaked out of her eye as Riku stepped through the Dark portal with Kairi, but this time he didn't notice.

He was too busy closely studying the little heartless that had come into the room shortly after their return, almost immediately so. It stared back at him with cheerfully twinkling eyes, its antennae doing a slow back-and-forth motion.

Kairi knew exactly why Riku was studying it: Kairi was looking at the heartless now with suspicion herself. It was hard to imagine this creature was the exact same as the ones who turned monstrous and devoured Hook's original crew. But, regardless of whether or not she believed it, it was.

Finally, Riku shook his head and straightened back up. The little heartless scurried over to stand beside him and looked up at Riku almost plaintively. He looked towards it with some lingering distrust, and finally spoke.

"Do a cartwheel."

It blinked and widened its stance slightly, before leaning over to one side and completing a cartwheel.

"Now jump up once." It did. "Twice." It did.

Riku watched it just as it watched him, and finally held out his arm.

"Attack me."

This time, the little heartless was slow to follow the order, almost as if it were hesitant. But then, with slow shuffling steps that got faster, the little heartless began to lunge at him with its claws brandished.

"Stop."

Mid-leap, and the little heartless crumpled to the ground in a clumsy pose with its limbs tucked in to keep from hurting him. It had followed his orders to the letter and no more, unlike how the others reportedly did on _The Jolly Roger._ The little heartless shakily got back to its feet and looked up at Riku with curiosity.

And in turn, he looked at it the same way. After several tense minutes, Riku finally told it, "Just like before. Watch over Kairi here, and if anyone or anything comes into this room, find me immediately and let me know. Okay?"

It nodded. At that, Riku got up and left the room.

Kairi watched it for a little while after he left. She wondered what he could be doing—Perhaps he'd left to get some answers out of Maleficent as to exactly what happened for the heartless on the ship to behave that way, or maybe he'd gone to test and make sure the other heartless weren't threats lying in wait the same way. Well, technically _all_ heartless were potential threats, she knew that well enough. She had experience with that, even, from Traverse Town and watching Sora on her travels.

Just thinking of her again gave a pained squeeze to Kairi's Heart. Sora had been _so close._ She had been right there, almost close enough to touch.

She felt her lingering teardrop finally fall out of her eye and down her cheek lazily, this time pushed out by nothing except its own weight. Kairi withdrew back to the white room.

She walked out the doorway, and through the stone cave down the corridor. Kairi's gaze did not glide over the details of this place this time, but instead examined everything with a new perspective. The drawings on the walls, with tree roots here and there like the parentheses to a child's imagination. The sand kicked up by her stride. The harsh grind of the stone against her finger when she held out a hand as she walked. Kairi ducked under the overgrown flora at the entrance and walked outside.

It hadn't changed one bit since she was last out here. The perfect gleam of the deep teal waves as they gently broke ashore, the ivory uniform tone of the sand. Far above stretched an endless blue sky with the sun at high noon, unchanged from when she'd arrived. Exactly like Hollow Bastion's unchanged sun, funnily enough. But where the latter was almost uneasily bearing down upon the world, like a constant threat, the sun here was nothing but an endless dream.

And that's because it sort of _was_ , Kairi realized now. Not literally a dream, but something approaching it. Something that was real once, and polished to unrealistic perfection by memory. Something preserved by memory.

Kairi kneeled down and grabbed a handful of sand. She watched as even a small trickle escaped her tight grip and fell out entirely as she let go. She dusted off the stray granules on the fabric of the overskirt to her shorts as she stood back up and looked around. Every tree and shrub and blade of grass that was on the play island before Destiny Islands fell was accounted for here. Even the rickety wooden walkways and pebbles. Even the door. But the room that lay beyond it was entirely misplaced, as if it were from someone _else's_ memory and haphazardly attached to this one. Kairi made her way back to the boy on the ivory throne, back to the white room where he slept.

Kairi hovered in the doorway and watched him. His Heart still glowed with that unnatural Light, a Light she'd seen before in one of her friends. In Sora.

Whenever Kairi was puzzling something out, in the beginning it was usually a mess; An unorganized collage of all the bits and pieces of information she had, that would otherwise look unrelated to each other if it weren't for that little nagging feeling in her head saying _There's something there. Look for it._

It was sort of the mental equivalent of when a word was at the tip of your tongue and you couldn't quite reach it, yet you knew it was there. An idea just floating under the surface of your thoughts, vaguely known by the shape of it but not the substance.

Over time, the mess would slowly organize itself—A stray moment here connects to a known fact there, connects to a conjecture here that is in turn backed up by this other fact. And somewhere along the way, little pieces connecting to each other helped to make up larger chunks, which connected to other larger chunks. Like completing one of those thousand-piece puzzles in sections.

And now the last couple of pieces slid into place.

Kairi looked down at her hands and flexed them, exactly as she had managed to do in her real body. When Sora was near.

Sora, and nobody else.

Sora, the girl with two Hearts. One of which was right in front of Kairi, inside the sleeping boy.

"'The Light within you will lead you to the Light of another,'" She echoed aloud the words she heard that night. "'Someone to keep you safe.'"

Sora.

Kairi was inside Sora's Heart.

* * *

 **SORA**

It was rare that Sora ever had trouble sleeping. In fact, she wasn't sure if she'd ever had trouble falling asleep before, but she certainly did now.

 _With the last heartless dropped into the water, they were alone on the ship._

 _Hook was gone, having ran off in one of the emergency escape boats before they could realize where he was going, with Smee rowing them away as fast as he could from the ticking crocodile that chased them both._

 _But Riku was gone too. And with him, Kairi._

 _Sora was relieved beyond belief to know Kairi was okay. Or, that at least she'd made it off the islands in one piece like Sora and Riku. And that gave Sora hope. Because if Kairi made it, maybe her mom did too, and everyone else on the islands. Classmates, teachers, neighbors._

 _Kairi had never been into the idea of sparring like her and Riku were. While Selphie, Wakka, and Tidus were trading blitz balls and jump ropes, Kairi would usually be off tagging along with her and Riku on a scheme or doing another crafting project. And the couple of times Sora and Riku would ask her about it, Kairi would laugh._

' _You two knuckleheads can clash swords all you want, I'm fine,' She'd say, 'I'll just keep score or find something better to do.'_

 _So if Kairi could survive off the island in worlds festering with the heartless, maybe everyone else could too. Destiny Islands may have crumbled, but that didn't mean the people did. They could reunite and rebuild._

" _Gawrsh," Sora heard Goofy say from behind her. "Kairi couldn't wake up, so maybe she's really lost her—"_

 _Donald hushed him harshly before he could finish his sentence. Sora could feel their eyes on her back, watching her for any signs of distress at what had transpired. She could hear Peter Pan speak next._

" _Sora…"_

 _Goofy was right. Kairi may have shown a small sign of life, with her fingers twitching, but there was still that unnerving comatose state she was in. No walking or talking, hardly able to sit upright on her own unless she was propped up like a doll. Something was wrong; Kairi's Heart was indeed gone._

 _And Riku…Something was wrong with him, too. He acted like Sora didn't care about saving Kairi, like she completely ditched him, and he was too blind to see it wasn't true. And more than that, he was losing himself to the Dark, just like that strange woman warned her that he might do one day. Riku was working with the people who were responsible for the worlds becoming infested with heartless and falling to the Darkness, and even trusting them when they said they'd help get Kairi's Heart back. For all anyone knew, they were the ones responsible for her losing it in the first place._

 _How could he be so stupid?_

 _Then again, Sora thought with a chuckle, Kairi was supposed to be the smart one of them, not Riku. She was the one always trying to keep them from being reckless and bring them back down to earth. Riku, she knew, fulfilled the role of being the strongest. He'd rarely lose a fight, and when he did it was only ever to Sora. And Sora…_

' _The gummi ship runs on happy faces,' Donald had said._

 _Maybe Sora wasn't the strongest, or the smartest. But she was always the one with cheer. The one that brought the smiles, the laughter. The one that tried to bring the spark of Light in Darker times. And these were certainly Dark times right now._

 _So right now, Sora had to keep doing what she did best. Keep up the laughter and the antics and make everyone else able to breathe a little easier. Highwind—really, the group as a whole—ran on happy faces, and Sora had taken that to Heart._

 _Maybe one day Sora could find a way to keep the cheer and be the strongest and smartest. Become a perfect leader. But that day wasn't today._

 _So, she decided right now she'd do what she did best: Keep up the cheer._

" _I still can't believe it," Sora exclaimed, trying to muster up a bit of real excitement, not feigned. She spun around to the rest of the group. "I really flew! Wait 'till I tell Kairi, though she might not believe me."_

" _You can bring her here one day, Tink'll help you fly!" Peter Pan encouraged._

 _Slowly, Sora smiled._

" _Yeah," She replied. "One day."_

The gummi ship gave another rumble underneath, its engine struggling to keep them on the route back to Traverse Town.

After they'd sealed the keyhole to Neverland—or London, as Wendy had called it. Apparently it was sort of like two worlds in one according to what Peter Pan said, who had visited London before by flying from Neverland (Two stars to the right, he told them before they left, and straight on until morning)—and returned to the crashed _Highwind,_ Sora had begged the rest of the group to go after Riku and Kairi. To the extent that she even revealed some of what she knew—that Riku was working alongside Maleficent, that back at Monstro Riku was really offering for her to join him in the Dark, too. They didn't ask how she'd found out about the first part, but in the wake of the revelations they were too surprised to think of it.

" _Please, Riku's working with Maleficent and the heartless, who knows what'll happen to her?" Sora pleaded. "We have to go to Hollow Bastion now. Before it's too late."_

" _I'm sorry, Sora, but we can't," Replied Donald, unusually forlorn. He pulled back the lever and looked relieved when the gummi ship rumbled to life, albeit with several noises that weren't there before. "The gummi ship desperately needs to be fixed, and we're out of everything."_

" _That's true," Jiminy agreed. He had been hiding in the temperature regulation ducts of the gummi ship with the Ansem Reports and his journal while Captain Hook and the heartless were still around, and was now transcribing the newest Ansem Report the trio had found on the desk in the captain's quarters during a last look to check just in case Sora's friends had returned. "And if someone like Maleficent resides there, I'm sure it wouldn't be an easy trip at all. We'd need to prepare."_

 _Sora looked down and picked at the seams of the armrests. Her vision went blurry and hot._

 _She didn't look up when Goofy laid a hand on her shoulder, as she was too afraid of her tears showing. But she raised her head just enough to let him know she was listening._

" _In Monstro he was tryin' to get your help to save Kairi, remember?" He said, and she nodded. "So he seemed pretty dedicated to helping her already, to ask and go as far as trying to kidnap Pinocchio. Riku may be using the Darkness, but I'm sure his Heart belongs to the Light. So ya gotta believe in him, Sora. He'll keep Kairi safe until we can get there and figure out how to help, alright?"_

 _Goofy was right. He had to be._

 _Sora wiped at her eyes and finally looked up at him with a smile. The first real one she'd made since before they got captured, even if her eyes were red. Sora would believe in Riku. She would believe in the Light still in his Heart, even with all the Dark around it. And she would believe that there would be a way for her friends to make it through safely._

" _Okay."_

Sora could always sense when someone was staring at her. Even when she was asleep, but certainly when she was awake. And Sora could sense someone staring at her right now.

She rolled over in bed to flip on the light switch, and was not surprised to see Kairi sitting on her bed.

"Yeah?" Sora asked.

Kairi looked as though she was trying to work up the nerve to speak. "I need you to promise me something."

"Anything."

"Promise me you won't go to Hollow Bastion," Kairi said.

Sora could see the small spark of hope in her expression fade as Sora's shoulders fell. The sight of it wrenched her Heart.

"Kairi—"

"Promise me," Kairi insisted. When Sora didn't respond she balled her hands. "Promise me!"

The silence was unbearable.

And finally, Sora shook her head, stuttering, "…I-I can't."

"Sora—!"

"I can't!" She nearly yelled, and snuck a glance towards the door. Sora wasn't sure how much the gummi ship's construction muffled noise, but she wasn't in the mood to find out. "Somebody has to stop Maleficent! Somebody's gotta make sure our home comes back! And somebody has to stop the heartless so nobody else loses theirs!"

"Damn it, Sora, _listen_ to me!"

Sora recoiled slightly with surprise. It wasn't often that Kairi cursed.

Kairi closed her eyes and took another deep breath before she spoke. "You have no idea of what Maleficent's capable of. _I_ barely have any idea, and I've seen her off and on since this whole mess started. But I have enough of an idea to know you're going to get slaughtered," She still looked angry, but her chin started trembling. "Don't…don't go. Don't get yourself killed. _Please_."

Sora cast her eyes downward.

"I can't. I'm sorry. Someone has to save you and Riku."

Kairi gave a bitter laugh at that. "I realize now I'm not supposed to be saved. And the only person who can save Riku at this point is himself, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to."

"I promised someone long ago that I wouldn't let him fall to the Darkness. I never knew what she meant until now, but I feel like she may have seen this coming all along," After Sora spoke, confusion clouded her expression. "What do you mean, you're not supposed to be saved?"

Kairi shook her head. "If you save me at this point, all you'll be doing is playing right into Maleficent's plans."

"I already told you, I'm going to stop her."

"And I already told you, you can't. You'll get killed."

Sora did not speak for a long while once more. She bit her lip hard enough to start tasting pennies in her mouth.

And finally, Sora said, "Maybe that's the whole point."

Kairi had no response to that but stunned silence. She looked horrorstruck as Sora summoned her keyblade to her hand and absently gazed at it. "Maybe that's why the keybade chose me."

Sora watched as the keychain dangled from the hilt. "Maybe I'm not supposed to see the happy ending, I'm just supposed to make it happen."

"No," Kairi's voice had gone constricted and she shook her head once more, fiercely. " _No._ I can't believe I'm hearing this."

"Think of how many people lost everything to her and the heartless, Kairi," Sora replied. "Leon, Yuffie, Cid, and Aerith…They lost their home. And who knows how many people were lost when that happened? What about the other worlds that have already fallen to the Darkness?"

Kairi did not reply, and Sora went on. "When I saw Geppetto after he'd lost Pinocchio…I thought about my mom. I still haven't found her, Kai. I've been to all these worlds and I still haven't found my mom. And it made me think, how many others lost their parents? How many parents lost their kids? What if entire families were wiped out?" Sora shuddered. "My first day in Traverse Town after I'd woken up, I watched a guy get turned into a heartless right in front of me. I still think about his look of total terror sometimes. Before I knew you and Riku were okay, I thought about _you_ guys with that look of terror. I put on a happy face for Donald and Goofy and everybody else…but I can't help but think about it."

Sora looked back at her again. "That's why I can't promise you that I won't go. I'm sorry, Kairi. I really am. But it has to be me."

Kairi stared with that same look of horror and didn't seem to have any words left in her. It didn't take long before she blinked out of existence, and Sora was alone in her room once more. She traced her fingertips along the cold metal teeth of the keyblade.

"It has to be me," Sora said to it sadly. "I don't know why you chose me, but it has to be me. Doesn't it?"

The room was silent after that, with no response save for the steady gleam of her keyblade in the light.

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE**

Hey look, I finally included a hint to Aqua's meeting with tiny Sora and Riku :D I didn't forget about it! Everywhere else was either already too long of a chapter to squeeze it in or too irrelevant to shoehorn it in. But it's gonna be shown entirely in the final two chapters.

Speaking of! HOW EXCITED AM I TO FINALLY GET TO THE ENDGAME? I AM STUPID EXCITED FOR HOLLOW BASTION, YOU GUYS. IT'S GONNA BE LONG A LONG AS HELL 2-PARTER WHERE THE CHAPTERS LEGIT WILL PROBABLY BE 30K EACH AND CHOCK FULL OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND BACKSTORY AN AND ACTION AND OH MY GOD. OH AND DID I MENTION THE EPILOGUE? I'M GONNA SET UP FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT THERE Y'ALL, GET READY.

Oh, and the final two chapters will _definitely_ not be posted until after KH3 comes out. Sorry bout that, but I have to confirm if literally any of Kairi's backstory will be detailed upon, and if they'll discuss the fall of Radiant Garden at all. The latter I'm willing to bet on with what we've seen in the final few trailers, but anything on Kairi? Eh, their history is working against them and she's barely shown up in the trailers as it is. I'm not optimistic, but I shall hope (´•̥̥̥ω•̥̥̥`)

(also I may or may not have a theory that Ansem SoD possessing Riku's body in KH1 will become relevant in KH3 when they're trying to assemble The Norts) (I want to see if that pans out so I can know whether to include it in what goes on next chapter and the final chapter)

Also, I'm so sorry that a fair bit of the storytelling here is more implied rather than shown! This chapter was already 20k and I figured I dragged things out long enough :( I'll include them down below.

NOTES:  
1\. Swimming 24/7 would be absurdly exhausting. This was one of those things I loved the manga for—the trio were exhausted at the end of the atlantica chapter!

2\. Just in case you guys were confused, The Jolly Roger went from Neverland (where the ship was moored) to London, made to leave London to fly towards Hollow Bastion, landed back in London's waters when Riku ordered them to catch the gummi ship as they didn't have enough pixie dust to continue flying after that, and is en route back to Neverland as Peter Pan took control of the ship and made it fly again w/ Tinker Bell's pixie dust, just like in the movie. Yep, the crew all flew around in a giant pirate ship in the middle of London to get to the keyhole just like in the manga! Tinker Bell saw the keyhole as she was trying to follow after where Peter Pan left to drop Wendy off at Big Ben, so she's the one who told the group where it was.

3\. Capt. Hook illicitly got his big-ass pixie dust supply from Zarina, a character in the Tinker Bell movies. I needed a reason as to why his ship would be capable of flight and be able to capture Highwind in space like it was in-game.

4\. Yeah, I know in the game they were actually trying to capture Wendy because they thought she was a PoH, buuuuut… ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

5\. "And he was afraid of being anything else other than good." Yeah, uh…Riku has his head too far up his own ass right now to realize what he's doing isn't good or justified. He'll learn in the next chapter, I promise. All of this pays off spectacularly. Especially in the next installment.

6\. In the game, the meeting cutscene when Peter Pan says, "Come on, Tink! Open up the door!" Sora clears his throat and the shot cuts to the trio standing there looking at Peter Pan, and Sora has his keyblade ready. It does give a handy in-universe explanation as for why the trio's able to most anywhere they please in the levels, barring the trinity entrances. I thought it was funny, on top of the scene where Riku's trying to be all hardcore and boasting about how he can control the heartless, and Sora's only response is that Riku's a dumbass.

7\. In the game, Wendy legitimately did blockade the door with a chest of drawers, you can see her run to check on it in the scene w/ her and Kairi. Good job, Wendy!

8\. Yes, the heartless at the end weren't killed using a keyblade, which is technically against the game's canon. However, they do it that way in the manga, and I've got an explanation in mind as to how simply drowning the heartless would still work to free the Hearts and not doom them to destruction!

See you guys later when KH3 releases and we're all in a sobbing heap _(:3」∠)_


	12. Chapter 11: Home of the Heartless, Pt1

WOW with all the notes and everything the wordcount for this chapter comes to 49k on FFN. Whew! Well, anyways, sorry for the lateness of this chapter. KH3 did not satisfy me at all. So...I'm going to slowly make this series a little more canon divergent over the course of its installments so that by the time I get to KH3's adaptation I can rewrite it from the ground up (and I am for sure going to write KH3 as the end to this fanfic series) Anyways, here we gooo!

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _So this is it,_ Kairi thought to herself as she slid back down the wall of the white room. _Sora's gonna die._ She crumpled to the floor with not a sound nor a tear to be had.

Instead, the horror had bled into an odd sort of vertigo that left her unsteady even just sitting half-upright, but this was not the same as when she had learned what fate would befall the worlds if she were to ever escape Sora's Heart—rather, if Kairi were pressed to describe the feeling, she would define it as the sense that she had woken up in an alternate universe.

An alternate universe where instead of her and her best friends going on a short little sailing trip and coming right back home at the end, Riku was helping jump-start an apocalypse that Sora was going to get herself killed trying to stop. And somewhere between them both, stuck inside Sora's Heart, Kairi was going to have a front row seat in watching her best friend die. And when—not if—that happened, what would that mean for her? When Sora would die, could that mean Kairi would die too?

 _(There were some things you could prepare for all you wanted, but in the end, life happened, and death ensued.)_

Kairi realized that at some point in the middle of her thoughts her gaze had wandered towards the boy in the pale throne. He was sleeping as always, with no outward evidence of any awareness of her plight. Before then she would have been envious or even resentful of how peaceful he looked. And really, she should logically feel the same now. But instead all Kairi felt was amusement.

"It's not a bad idea," It was the first time she'd spoken to him in quite a while. "Sleeping through the end of the world. Or, uh, worlds."

Talking with Sora for as long as she did had used up the rest of whatever adrenaline Kairi felt from being able to move again. Beyond the feeling of waking up in an alternate universe, sleep was beckoning. Kairi decided to embrace it; Maybe she'd wake up again in an alternate universe where the sailing trip had gone off without a hitch and everything was fine. After all, stranger things have happened. Key-shaped swords and inhabiting your best friend's Heart were just the tip of a vast iceberg.

And so, without anything else to say to the boy, Kairi fell asleep.

* * *

 **SORA**

Cid's rattled sigh came out sounding much more like a hiss with how tightly clenched his jaw was. "Okay," He finally said.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

"So-o-o," Sora trailed off as she wrung her hands nervously. She could feel her legs falling asleep from the cross-legged pose she was sitting on the tool drawers in, but Sora didn't dare move. She'd already nearly rolled away with it once when she had first climbed on, and only just switched the wheel locks in time to see Cid rolling his eyes at her antics right after he'd warned her not to topple it over. "You're totally cool with it? All of it?"

"Sayin' I'm cool with it would be a bit of an overstatement, kid," The toothpick in Cid's mouth bobbed up and down as he worked on the trio's gummi ship engine. "But I'll make my peace with it, I guess. Eventually. 'S not like I can deny your logic anyway."

"Right," Sora replied. "Stopping the heartless at the source would be the only way to fix everything for good."

"I don't know about 'fix'," Cid heaved another sigh at that, marginally more relaxed this time, and winced as his back cracked when he straightened up and leaned on the…whatever part of the engine he was leaning on now. Sora had forgotten the absurdly long name for it before Cid had even finished saying it in its entirety. "I've learned over the years that fixing a problem and just making the problem stop can be two different things. Two _very_ different things. You can make a dam stop leaking but it can be a bit of an issue trying to replace the water it lost when you're already in a drought. Pass me the hex key, will ya? Six millimeter."

"The L-shape thingy, right?" She asked as her hand hovered over the now-open drawer.

"Yeah," They both paused as Sora's hand continued to hover, unsure of which one she should pluck up. There were a lot of the aforementioned L-shape thingies. "The biggest one. Toss it to me."

She did, and Cid neatly caught it in a grease-blackened hand. "Good throw. So," He began again as he bent back over the exposed engine, "This is the home of the heartless you're talkin' about. You scared?"

"Of course not!" Sora blustered, but it wasn't long before her bravado faded. She slumped slightly when she saw Cid raise one eyebrow smeared with motor oil. "Alright, maybe a little bit. Or more. But like I said, the keyblade chose me. It's not like I can just run away from what I'm supposed to do. And I have to save Kairi and Riku too."

At that, Cid looked off into space for several moments in thought.

"When you first came in the other night and told us what went down, I gotta admit," He said as he resumed tightening several bolts with the hex key, "You stumped us. Even Aerith and Leon, and they've been poring over the Ansem Reports nonstop ever since you brought that first one in."

"I…stumped you? What do you mean? I thought it was pretty straightforward."

Cid snorted. "Think again, kiddo. You said Kairi lost her Heart, right?"

"Yeah."

"So why isn't she a heartless?"

Sora froze.

"…I don't know," She finally answered. The thought had never occurred to her once. "Maybe she lost her Heart some other way?"

"That's assuming there _is_ another way," Cid reminded her. He muttered a curse when one bolt refused to screw. "Before the heartless, we didn't know people could lose their Hearts at all. And the heartless are the only way we've found for people to lose their Hearts since. Whatever's wrong with Kairi, it's something entirely new."

"Can we still fix it?"

"Hearts are a little harder to fix than gummi ships," He replied. When she didn't respond, he glanced over and winced at her troubled expression. "Sorry kid, I'm not good at this sort of stuff like Aerith is. But I said 'harder' to fix, not 'impossible'. That's why you collected those Ansem Reports, right? Beyond just fixing this whole mess with the worlds, they likely got a way to fix all the lost Hearts."

"Alright," Sora figured she could work with that. But when were the Ansem Reports going to turn up something useful? The latest one from Captain Hook's desk, marked the fourth in the series, only discussed observations on the heartless that were already well-known.

' _It's just occurred to me,'_ The report had concluded, _'Could they be the darkness in people's hearts?'_

 _("You're_ stupid! _Sooner or later they're going to swallow your Heart!")_

Kairi had already lost her Heart, but Riku was coming closer and closer to losing his as well. A Heart without Light was no Heart at all, and Sora saw evidence of that nearly everywhere she went on this journey. But how could she keep Riku from the same fate? Every encounter she had had with him so far had ended either with him running off or with him trying to convince her that Darkness—the very force responsible for her and her friends losing everything—was nothing to worry about. Then again, Sora thought, maybe somewhere in the Ansem Reports…

"Do you think there might be a way to, um," Sora fumbled with the words. She wasn't quite sure how to put this. "Fix people? Like, keep them from falling to Darkness in the first place?"

Cid straightened so fast at that the back of his head collided painfully with the gummi ship's opened hood, and the gonging noise of the impact failed to drown out the string of curses he yelped as he clutched at the back of his head. The empty hangar still echoed slightly with his colorful remarks after he'd stopped.

"Ugh. Okay. First off: Put this back in that drawer and hand me the ratchet extender—the blue one—and the twenty-millimeter socket I used earlier," Sora was getting better at catching the repair tools, and this time caught the hex key with only a small fumble. Only after Cid caught the requested parts and pulled a ratchet from his back pocket did he continue. "Now to actually answer your question, no. No, no, no no no _no,_ no no no. No. Did I remember to say 'no'? Just gonna say it one more time, kid, _no._ You can't go around thinkin' you can fix people. That's one hell of a slippery slope towards a dead end."

"But what if—"

"No."

"You didn't even hea—!"

"I said no."

Each leveled the other with a stare for some time until Sora gave in first, and she irritably uncrossed her legs and kicked her feet back and forth as she stared at the floor instead.

"He's still my friend," Sora murmured.

"Yeah, I figured you were referring to that Riku boy," Cid muttered as he leaned back onto the engine and assembled the pieces he'd requested before angling it towards something Sora couldn't see. "But look, are you sure you're still _his_ friend? 'Cause friends don't chuck you to the heartless on pirate ships. And they don't take you prisoner, either. And I'm pretty sure they don't try and do this," Cid knocked on the dented hull to punctuate his words. "To your gummi ship. Not on purpose, anyway."

"It wasn't on purpose," She defended. "That happened in the chase."

"That chase that I'll bet five munny he ordered?"

"I mean, it was likely Captain Hook. He was the one who first told us we were prisoners of the ship, remember?"

"Alright, fine, I'll give you that," Cid said, "But he still threw you and the guys below-deck to the heartless and didn't care about what danger that could pose. Which reminds me, if he could control the heartless like he claimed, he didn't bother to try and take the edge off of them one bit. If the two of you were friends, you'd think he would at least tell them to leave you guys alone and definitely not make heartless copies for you to fight."

"I," Sora struggled desperately to try and form some sort of argument to that, but found she couldn't. "Okay, yeah. I'm not sure why he did that."

"Did what?"

Both Sora and Cid looked over to see Aerith approach with three empty glasses in one hand, clutched so that the rims were held together in her fingers. In the other hand a pitcher of lemonade tinkled as she set it down on the tool cart beside Sora and started to fill the glasses.

"She doesn't know why that Riku boy sicced the heartless on her and Donald and Goofy," Cid replied as he climbed down from the ship and put his tools in his pockets. He tried wiping his grimy hands on his equally motor-oil-stained pants. "Kid, it's 'cause he's a little turd who wanted to hurt you. Someone like that's not your friend."

"Riku's not a turd! And he _is_ my friend, it's just," Sora was still unable to deny Cid's argument. There wasn't any sort of positive spin she could come up with on the fact of Riku having thrown them to the heartless, but she couldn't bring herself to say Cid was right. To do so would mean admitting Riku and her weren't friends. And it would also mean he _had_ wanted to hurt her and Donald and Goofy. Acknowledging either scenario as possibilities would be unbearable.

Sora took the glass Aerith offered and pretended not to notice the pitying glance she passed her way as well. She distracted herself by watching the ice swirl around in her glass. Sora continued, "I really don't know why he did that. But he didn't want to hurt me. Riku's never been like that, I've known him all my life. Something's up with him this time and he's not who he was."

She looked up to see them both giving her looks of exasperation (from Cid) and more pity (primarily from Aerith, but Cid somewhat as well). Sora set down her glass with a _clank!_

"Seriously, this isn't like him at all!" She exclaimed, "He's been acting weird since before Destiny Islands fell. Talking about that door, getting mad when I mentioned the dream telling me to open it. All that talk about wanting to leave the islands—I, well, okay, _that_ was understandable, but I'm not going to go into that—and then back when I finally saw him again over in the Third District that one time and he got kinda icy when I tried introducing Donald and Goofy, and then with the whole Darkness thing and how in Monstro he wanted me to go with him and use the Darkness too to save Kairi," Sora wrapped her arms around herself.

She went on, "Until the past two months now, he was always nice. Competitive, yeah, and there was that while where it was like he avoided me or something, but super nice. And funny, and he could always come up with something fun to do, or a sparring match, and he was really good at everything…well, I'm sure he's still kinda good at everything even now…and…"

Sora trailed off when she saw Aerith's and Cid's faces shift as they seemed to come to some sort of a conclusion at this, and they both shared a knowing glance that was full of something she couldn't identify. Concern? Exasperation? Resignation? Sora couldn't tell.

"What?" She asked.

"Riku means a lot to you, doesn't he?" Aerith said.

"Well, yeah, he's one of my best friends. Of course he means a lot to me."

"You sure that's it? Nothing else?" Cid replied dryly. Beside him, Aerith watched her with the same expression Sora couldn't identify, but she now realized at least part of it was amusement. Why was she amused?

"Yes, grandpa," Sora deadpanned back. "I'm absolutely sure."

"Watch it," Cid warned. "I'm not that old."

"Yet," Aerith supplied with a teasing smile at him.

"Not you too!"

Sora and Aerith cracked up, and finally even Cid's mouth broke into a smirk as he rolled his eyes.

"Fine, laugh it up," He relented, "Maybe I am gettin' old—my back sure won't let me forget it. And my knees. But let's not make this about me," Cid turned back to Sora with a stern look. "What I was going to say was, you can't set yourself on fire trying to keep other people warm. You can't try to fix people who don't want to be fixed. And you can _not_ keep people from falling to the Darkness when that's precisely what they want to do. Do you get what I'm tryin' to say, kid?"

Sora's posture sank back to its former angle. "Yep."

 _("That's your job, Sora. And I'm counting on you to do it, okay?")_

"The thing is," She continued, "I'm not just saving him 'cause he's my best friend. Though that is a big part of it."

"Oh yeah?"

She nodded. "A really long time ago when I was a little kid, I, uh, I kind of made a promise."

Cid gave her a squint as his ever-present toothpick bobbed up and down. "A promise, huh? Then here," He said as he withdrew the ratchet parts from his pocket and handed them to Sora. "You can tell us all about it while you help me install these shields."

* * *

 **RIKU**

He stared at the little heartless, and the little heartless stared right back. Beside them both, situated back on her bed, Kairi stared at nothing. Riku hadn't left her side since returning from the heated conversation he'd had with Maleficent immediately after their return from _The Jolly Roger_ two days ago.

The little heartless must have sensed the shift in its and Riku's companionship, for it no longer acted quite so guileless and playful as before. Its eyes did not wink with a curious light, and its antennae only shifted in the usual discordant beat that all its fellows did. Instead, it seemed to sag slightly as it kept its head upright to return his glances, like the little heartless was feeling despondent at the prospect of no longer having Riku's friendship. It reminded Riku quite a bit of a dog after being turned away by its master, that same quiet desperation to be together again—

No. He could _not_ afford to be sentimental right now. All dogs can bite, and so could all heartless. It didn't matter how friendly either one seemed. Riku could not afford to trust anyone in this place anymore save for Kairi. Though really, it might be more accurate to say he couldn't trust anyone in this place but Kairi all along.

" _Do you know why the sun never sets on Hollow Bastion?"_

" _Just answer my question, Maleficent," Riku said through gritted teeth, "Why did my control over the heartless slip back in Neverland?"_

" _I_ am _answering your question, boy. Humor me for a moment."_

 _He sighed._

" _Fine. Please tell me all about why the sun hasn't changed one bit since I got here."_

 _Maleficent did not bother to glance over at him from where she stood in front of the broken window. The moth-eaten remains of drapes fluttered fitfully around her as she stared down at the former courtyard. Riku glanced over as well, and saw nothing more than the usual sight; the perpetually dying light of Hollow Bastion's sun casting the withered flowerbeds and dried-up fountains in a sickly orange glow, framed by the skeletons of trees clawing at the cracked pavement with their shadows. Riku wasn't sure whatever it was Maleficent saw as she looked down, but all he saw around them was ruin. He could feel Diablo watching him loftily from where he perched on her shoulder._

" _The heartless were already here when I arrived after the end of my home world," She said, "Though it was not the first time I had encountered the creatures. They were there not long before the end of my world as well. A great many thought that the creatures—who were no simple matter to fell with sword or spear like common beasts—were some strange heralds to the end times. And I suppose they were right," She added with a humorless chuckle, "But not because of the heartless. My world ended because of me."_

 _Maleficent continued, "It was shortly after I had initially learned of the Princesses of Heart and the potential of Kingdom Hearts, for an interesting fellow told me of both. And he told me of a great many other secrets of the worlds as well. How long ago they were in fact all one, and the Dark was what led to the great rupture. And how it was the Dark that could lead one to the right instruments to conquer the remainders."_

" _I was intrigued," She went on, "For it wasn't too long after the misbegotten christening of the land's princess that I told you of in Traverse Town. Only maybe sixteen years at the most. That slight still burned, and thoughts of revenge were still fresh in my mind. So imagine my pleasant surprise when the perfect 'instrument' came along for me to conquer my world with. His Darkness…hmm. It was by no means comparable to yours or mine, boy, but it was completely untamed. He was far too afraid of his Darkness—and by extension, far too afraid of himself—to control it. And so it was slowly devouring his Heart just as his zealotry for the Light was devouring his good sense."_

" _I really don't need to stand here and listen to you brag about how you manipulated someone else just like you did me," Riku huffed. "I'll go find my answer somewhere else."_

" _You really are terrible at listening, aren't you?" Maleficent replied. "If you were paying attention, you'd have figured out by then what the point of my tale was."_

" _Oh yeah? What was the point of all that, then? Getting your revenge just because you weren't invited to some birthday party?"_

" _Christening," She calmly corrected him, "And no. My tale is about control. Not necessarily control over others, but yourself."_

"' _Not necessarily control over others'? You were literally just about to discuss how you controlled some other innocent guy to carry out your will."_

" _If you were paying attention, and let me speak at least a moment longer, you would find out I didn't need to control him at all. As I said, his zealotry for the Light was devouring his good sense. To the point that_ that, _combined with his never learning proper control over his Darkness beyond complete avoidance of it, made him listen to me far more than he should. Just as I, consumed with the prospects of my own revenge, made me listen to my baser thoughts far more than I should have," Maleficent winced slightly in her reverie, and Riku couldn't deny his slight shock at it. She had never admitted weakness once in their time together so far, nor had she ever seemed anything less than infallible. Diablo inclined his head so that his beak pointed towards the floor, as if matching his mistress' shame._

"… _The darkness of night and the Darkness of the Heart have ways of calling each other forth," Maleficent finally spoke. "I did not realize it until my world had already crumbled—and I regret that now. I only wanted to rule it, to have power over those who used their power to scorn me. I did not want to be queen of the ashes. But I realized too late what potential the heartless held. Oh, I knew their uses: You've seen and done enough so far to know what excellent servants they make. But they required a far tighter leash than I initially realized."_

 _She finally looked away from the window to scrutinize Riku._

" _My world fell to ashes with the setting of its sun. And so did your world, for you told me on your first day here that you took the Heart of the islands after nightfall," She made no mention of the alarm that quickly overtook his face at this, "On Captain Hook's ship, your control over the heartless was already slackened from the outset by the fact that the twin worlds Neverland and London were then in the middle of their night. Haven't you realized yet why I do not let the sun set on Hollow Bastion?"_

 _Maleficent shook her head. "It's why I didn't tell you to take the worlds' Heart while you were there, and to only focus on Wendy instead of your usual instruction. If you had completed the Wonderland and Agrabah missions promptly and in their entirety, I would have had time to come in afterward and ensure their Hearts did not crumble and be able to control the heartless' unrest with ease. If you had done the same at night, the world would fall with its Heart to the Darkness within the span of minutes. There would have been very little time for me to properly interfere without taking drastic measures and risk doing more harm than good."_

 _She finished, "Balance, Riku. It's what I've been telling you all along. Cede only just enough to the Dark and it will be a boon, but too much makes for a bane instead. A world succumbed to the Darkness in whole is of no use to anyone but the heartless."_

 _("All beings need balance between Light and Dark. Even worlds. Too much Light is dangerous, and we must harness the Darkness to bring equilibrium. We must take this Heart.")_

 _Riku could barely hear her speak after the reveal that his home world had been destroyed entirely. Destiny Islands…gone? Every rock, tree, grain of sand all crumpled to dust? Every building, from the smallest boardwalk shack to the tallest skyscraper, gone. Just like that._

 _(He looked to the Heart again. Power. Freedom. At what cost?)_

 _One terrifying thought occurred to him; What about the people? Where did they go?_

 _He and Sora had come out fine, but Kairi did not. Riku began to feel nauseated as he checked down the mental list—Wakka, Tidus, Selphie, Kairi's parents, Sora's mom, even_ his _mother. Where did they all end up? How did they all end up? Did any of them turn out like Kairi and become shells of who they were?_

 _The room began to feel as though it were spinning as his Heart slid down somewhere past his stomach. Riku leaned heavily against the windowsill as goosebumps raised on his skin._

 _This wasn't real. This was not real._

 _He raised his head slightly as that one thought suddenly made everything so clear._

 _This wasn't real at all. Maleficent was lying again._

 _How could he be gullible enough to take her words at face value again? She's already lied to him at every turn, turned that mantra about balance in every direction she possibly could, and now she was using it to turn him against the man in the hood as well._

 _("Nothing is free, Riku. I know that man didn't help you for free, even if you think he did.")_

 _No, no, this wasn't the first time she tried to turn him against the man that helped him gain his freedom. She'd been working all along to undermine his trust in the one person that had only ever wanted to help in all of this._

" _Shut up," He bit out. "Just shut up. For once in your life, Maleficent, shut. Up."_

 _Maleficent's face would have been hilarious if he weren't so angry; It was an expression of pure indignant surprise, with her painted lips pulled just slightly in a sneer that conveyed the measure of disgust in her reaction. Her eyes widened to the point that the sclera were even more overwhelming than usual—with none of their usual greenish light he'd noticed even as recently as earlier in the conversation—and her arched brows were threatening to disappear under her horned headdress. The expression was such a departure from the typical unsettling nature of her presence that Riku had to fight the urge to laugh. Diablo seemed to freeze in place except for his feathers, which were beginning to puff up._

 _And all she said in response was, "What."_

" _You heard me," He retorted, and ignored how her expression went from comical to something edging towards dangerous at this. For if he didn't ignore it, he'd risk losing his nerve. "Everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie. Everything! I arrive here and within a minute you're leaping on the prospect of having some minion to do whatever you want and think whatever you want. You tell me one thing and then you turn right around and tell a whole different story to someone else so you can use them_ _too. I'm so sick of it!"_

 _Maleficent scoffed. "Think again, boy. Consider my words and you'll find I haven't lied to you once—"_

" _I told you to shut up! You've lied to me every time you spoke to me: On my first day here you lied to me about why the guy who helped me off the islands helped at all. 'Didn't help you for free'? Yeah, right. You just can't imagine anybody else helping for the sake of being nice because you'd never do such a thing. For you it's always about how_ you'd _benefit down the line. Like Kairi."_

 _The change in her whole person was minute, but the slight squint in her eyes and the almost imperceptible shift to her other foot made Riku realize he had her whole attention now. Finally, thankfully, she didn't talk._

" _I know you're planning something with her. You told me that in exchange for working for you I'd get a place to stay here, a weapon, and some powers over the Dark. That's all. So why are you going above and beyond to help me get her Heart back? You gave Pinocchio that star shard and figured out where he was, so you could study him and try to help my theory of mimicking whatever way he developed a Heart—too bad that was a total bust—to make another one for Kairi. Not to mention you put in the effort of recovering Kairi's body in the first place," He remembered, "And then it didn't take long before you lied about your ideas on where her Heart might be too. In Wendy? Please. There was no reason at all for me to go fetch her. I even went ahead and sat Kairi down with her on the ship just in case you were right, because I was desperate enough to fix whatever's wrong with her to actually try listening to you again when I shouldn't have bothered."_

 _Riku began to pace in small circles as he thought back to the incident. Maleficent remained utterly silent as she watched him closely, with Diablo on her shoulder doing the same._

" _And then Sora ended up on the ship not too long after," He didn't have to look to know she was rolling her eyes at him at this, and Riku steadfastly ignored her. "That's when everything really went sideways. Not just with the whole losing control over the heartless, but with Kairi. Sora managed to make her way to her and Wendy past the heartless, with the help of Peter Pan and that—that awful duck and dog that tag along with her everywhere," His hands balled into fists, "And seeing Sora again combined with the replacements she found for me and Kairi was pure torture. Torture, Maleficent. The sight of her was enough to make Kairi cry even without her Heart. Was that what you really wanted? Not even bothering to try and help at that point or keep up the illusion, but you were gutsy enough to—Why are you laughing?"_

 _By that point, Maleficent had started to chuckle, with Diablo giving out a tumbling chirruping call to match. Maleficent's chuckle had turned into a cackle, which then turned into a near-shriek that rang out through the corridor with her pet's now-warbling cry. Riku could feel his ears turn hot._

" _What the hell is so funny?"_

 _She didn't respond for several minutes as she and Diablo continued to laugh. Maleficent leaned on the windowsill with one hand as her own mirth overtook her, and it was some time longer before the most riotous of her laughter had subsided back into a chuckle. She still shook slightly as she straightened back upright with the widest grin he'd ever seen on her, and there was a glimmer of inspiration in Maleficent's eyes, with the former green light having returned to them in full. It was that green light that made Riku take a step back from her as a sinking feeling began in his chest. He knew he had made a mistake, but he didn't know what._

" _Oh, Riku. My dear child," Maleficent purred as she took a step towards him. Diablo's laugh-like calls only got louder. Riku took a step back. "My beautiful little fool."_

 _She took another step forward, and he took two steps back. Maleficent snickered._

" _My perfect idiot."_

From somewhere far off came the thunderous roar of a wild beast, as if in declaration of war.

Both he and the little heartless jumped at the sound, but neither moved beyond that. Riku did not move because he had to keep vigil over Kairi's body himself, for obvious reasons. He simply regarded the sound with the thought: _That's Maleficent's problem, now._

But the little heartless did not move for what could be a variety of reasons, both ones that he had and hadn't considered yet. Riku had only just begun to think about the quickly-growing list of conditions to his powers Maleficent had provided that infuriated him more by the minute. Though really, he reasoned, he should have expected such fail-safes from the likes of her.

The first reason as to why the heartless did not move was the simplest: Riku hadn't told it to. But then again, he had begun to think he couldn't tell the heartless to do much at all.

He once thought he could use the heartless to overtake Maleficent. But now he realized, why on earth would she allow that?She was the one who gave him the power in the first place. She could take it away. And she likely held veto power over him in regard to his commands—if Riku told the heartless to move against her, she could tell them to stop.

And worse yet, Riku thought to himself, she might be able to tell the heartless to _pretend_ to follow his orders. To act like his own lackeys and then crawl right back and tell her what he'd done. Maleficent could have eyes everywhere beyond just Diablo. Such a concept wasn't outside of her character or her cunning.

That made the other reason as to why the little heartless might not have moved: Maleficent could have ordered it to keep an eye on him, knowing this heartless was one he had grown attached to.

And there was one final reason for the little heartless not moving, though the reasoning for which was from a place with more sentimentality than logic: Perhaps it merely did not want to go. Maybe, just maybe, it didn't want to leave Riku and Kairi behind.

But that was the exact sort of hopefulness that Maleficent thought she could manipulate in the beginning, and it was what led Riku to allow her to until he learned better. He discarded the notion as quickly as he had conceived it.

'In the beginning'. Things were much simpler then, weren't they?

Or maybe they weren't ever simpler, and the only difference was Riku's naïveté.

Whatever beast was wandering around or in the castle roared once more, and neither of them shifted this time. That is, until Riku heard another noise from somewhere not too far outside the window in Kairi's room. A very, very familiar noise.

It was interesting that Riku had already memorized it, for he heard the sound only once before: It was the machine-made racket of a gummi ship slowly winding down as it powered off.

Sora's gummi ship.

Riku quickly got to his feet and moved towards the window to look out. The cracked expanse of earth far below was empty with not even heartless in sight, but they had to be nearby. He spared a glance to the little heartless as it still watched him, to make sure it wouldn't take advantage of what he was about to do, and after confirming it was safe (or safe enough at least) he leaned out the window.

The window itself was quite slim, fit more for a prison cell than a bedroom, but if he angled himself just so Riku found he could slide at least partially out to look. Whatever glass there might have been in the window was long gone, with not even jagged pinpricks left around the edges. There just as likely was never glass in the window at all. Riku searched the grounds.

Beyond the empty field and remainders of trees and shrubs, past the flowerbeds long razed, stood the gummi ship perched delicately on the pavement. Its cartoonish—and frankly, almost obnoxiously colorful—exterior was such a departure from the decrepit surroundings of Hollow Bastion that Riku was partially convinced it had to be a mirage. He blinked once, twice, and rubbed the severe sleeplessness from his eyes. When the gummi ship was still there, Riku grinned.

Things were finally beginning to look up.

He ducked back inside and summoned Soul Eater to his hand for one last glance. Riku hadn't summoned it since returning to his room after that tumultuous conversation with Maleficent, and then all he had done with it was stare at it with disgust before tossing it aside. He really was a bit daft to consider ever trying to defeat Maleficent with her own weapon. She'd probably make it dissolve before it could ever come close, considering she made it.

Indeed, Riku thought with Dark pleasure, a simple sword wouldn't do for the task of ridding the worlds of Maleficent once and for all.

For that, he would need his keyblade.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

When she had initially woken up, Kairi was less than pleased—though ultimately unsurprised—to see she had not woken up in an alternate universe where everything turned out just fine with the sailing trip. Instead, all Kairi saw when she glanced through Sora's eyes that day was various gummi ship parts that Cid was showing her how to fix. And when she glanced through her own eyes, Kairi saw Riku curled up on one side of the room with the little heartless on the other. Neither sight changed much across the days, with the exception of dark circles of unrest blooming under Riku's eyes.

And now the worst would begin to come to pass: The trio were making their way to the growing red star of Hollow Bastion, thanks to a quick warp-drive to London's outer atmosphere to close a vast amount of the distance immediately (to Goofy's subsequent nausea). They would arrive quite soon.

"Hollow Bastion," Kairi murmured as she reverted to the white room. The boy, as always, was sleeping. "The home of the heartless, he called it?"

She couldn't help the corner of her mouth curling up at the moniker. It was a fitting name in more ways than one at this point. Aside from the creatures who used the citadel as their stronghold, Kairi's body was there. And Riku and Maleficent, though not having fallen to the Darkness they used— _yet—_ certainly could act rather heartless.

Kairi gnawed at her lip. She really, really did not want to see Sora die, but at the same time her own morbid curiosity wondered how much time they had left until the end of the worlds began. And a small part of her whose hope could not be quelled, certainly not for lack of trying, wondered if maybe Sora would survive. If she would pull through.

With one glance back at the boy on the pale throne, she looked again through Sora's eyes.

The gummi ship had by now reached the lower atmosphere of Hollow Bastion, and broke through the wisp-thin layer of clouds. And far down below, with its spires jutting towards the sky, towards _Highwind,_ stood the citadel of Hollow Bastion.

Kairi had never seen the outside of it before. She hadn't ever really seen the inside of it much, either, having been dropped off unceremoniously on her bed and left there excepting when Riku carted her away through a Dark portal on that ill-fated jaunt to Neverland. But even as wretched as the citadel had become since Maleficent's and the heartless' takeover, even with its visage wasted away into something half-devoured by the Dark and kept alive on a life support system of strange pipework unfolding across the surface, it was still…familiar.

She could feel her back hit the wall of the white room as her palms felt clammy. Kairi hadn't tuned out of Sora's vision yet, she didn't dare to now, but images from a time she had long forgotten began to overlay what she saw.

" _Are you sure this will be safe? I've heard of other participants having awful nightmares afterward, and that's not counting—"_

" _It will be perfectly safe for her, ma'am," The apprentice, a gaunt man with dishwater blond hair, cut in smoothly. His Heart was not quite Dark, but not quite Light, either. It was like it wasn't sure which side to choose. "His Majesty Ansem the Wise would never put anyone in harm's way, even for getting to the bottom of issues as serious as those creatures. It's only that matters of the Heart and its Darkness have only a select few ways of being observed and studied, which we must sadly abide by if we wish to understand them."_

 _Her mother's mouth drew quite thin, like it did whenever she was okay-but-not-really-okay with something. Her grip on Kairi's hand grew uncomfortably tight._

" _Mommy, that hurts," Kairi squirmed out of her hold, before her mother looked back down in realization and grabbed onto her hand again more gently._

" _Sorry, sweet pea," She said absently before casting a nervous glance at the looming castle as the group approached. "And you're absolutely positive I can't come along for the testing today? She's only three, she'll will need a chaperone of some sort, I'm sure. Her grandmother was open to the idea for any future visits."_

" _You cannot come along, I am afraid to say. Having loved ones watching on has affected results before, and isolation of subjects has proven to be one of the only ways of yielding consistent outcomes we can replicate. However, I can speak with His Majesty on the matter if today is promising."_

" _She'll be four in like three months, Mom," Lea replied as he cast a sly grin down at Kairi, who matched his expression. "Kairi's sturdy enough to protect herself now. She won't be some delicate princess locked in a tower, she'll be the one fighting the fire-breathing dragon. Right, Kai?"_

 _She had burst into giggles before he finished, already knowing what was coming next: Lea would rear back with his hands raised into outstretched claws, put on his fiercest expression, and pretend to breathe fire (there was one time where he really did try to breathe fire, because Isa was over that day and he wanted to impress him, but Lea only managed to singe his eyebrows clean off and they still hadn't grown back entirely yet—Kairi had to super promise to never tell mom about that one). But before he could, their mother used her free hand to swat down his raised arms with a scowl that was worse than usual._

" _Not now, Lea. Behave yourself in front of the King's apprentice," She warned. "Apprentice…Even, was it?" At the man's nod her mother continued, "What's today's visit going to involve? And when can we come back to pick her up?"_

" _I can't imagine the testing taking longer than three hours at the most," Even supposed. "All we will be doing today is just a repeat of the test everyone took last week, to make sure your daughter's results were accurate."_

 _Lea's grin from before returned in full force._

" _Gotta repeat it, huh?" He teased. "Usually the only time you repeat a test is because you failed_ _it. I guess Kai didn't have it memorized."_

" _Lea, what did I_ just _say?"_

" _Yes I did!" Kairi stamped one foot against the pavement in protest. "I did too have it—have it 'membered!"_

" _Memorized," Lea enunciated._

" _That's what I said!"_

" _No you didn't!"_

 _Even interjected before an argument could erupt. "Nobody failed anything," He soothed. "Least of all Miss Kairi. If anything, her results were quite extraordinary."_

' _Extraordinary' was a little more complicated, but she figured out instantly that it meant something really good by context. Kairi shot Lea a smug look, and he rolled his eyes at it._

" _You did mention that in the letter to request a redo," Her mother remarked. Her eyes didn't leave the castle. "May I ask what you meant by that? The letter didn't go into any detail, I'm afraid."_

" _Well, it was the most peculiar thing, really," Even replied as they continued to walk. "We haven't seen it in any other participants yet. The only way I can explain it is that it seems your daughter doesn't have any Darkness in her Heart at all."_

* * *

 **SORA**

She held her breath as Donald landed the gummi ship on what looked to be a courtyard of some sort just inside the outermost wall of Hollow Bastion's main structure. And now that they had arrived, Sora exhaled, and it came out with a ragged groan. None of the trio dared to speak first as they all stared up nervously at the gutted structure of the citadel.

Her stomach was pulling itself into knots much more than Sora expected. And a raw, soul-deep fear had settled right into it at the same time. She wasn't sure why she felt so afraid all of a sudden, it had started around when the gummi ship had first broken through the few wisps of clouds and pulled in an arc around the citadel's towers. Quick snapshots of memories not her own flashed by her eyes as she stared out the windshield towards the courtyard.

The courtyard whose only speck of color was the brightly painted gummi ship now parked within it. It hadn't always looked like this, Sora thought as the dried-up flower beds became saturated with color in her mind's eye. Amaryllises, chrysanthemums, dahlias. Over in that one corner once stood enormous hydrangea bushes, and all along the back row there were lilacs every spring—

Wait. How would Sora even know that? It wasn't like she'd ever been here before today, and she definitely wouldn't be able to just rattle off all the plants' names like that. That was the sort of thing only Kairi would be able to do.

 _Kairi._ Sora looked up at the citadel again. She was in there somewhere, surrounded by heartless and unable to run.

And Riku was somewhere in there too. With Maleficent.

She was _not_ looking forward to seeing Maleficent again, that was for sure. Or fighting her.

But…it had to be Sora, didn't it? The keyblade chose her for a reason.

She quietly unbuckled herself from the seat and stood up. As Donald and Goofy did the same, Sora took a moment to pat her pockets to make absolutely sure she had all the potions and elixirs she could carry. She went as far as to stash a few in her hood, given that Jiminy did not accompany them on this excursion (as there was too high of a likelihood that he could get hurt, despite this visit's certainty of yielding information that would be pertinent to the group's theorizing. The unspoken reason was that this visit may not turn out so well after all, and if the worst were to happen then someone needed to remain and be able to tell the king what happened).

"Would ya look at that?" Goofy said as he finally broke the quiet. Sora could hear the tinkling of countless potions and elixirs in his own pockets as Goofy pointed up at the citadel.

All three of them angled their heads to see a vast heartless sigil plastered right in the middle of the building. Donald grumbled out a noise of distaste.

"She's made herself right at home, that's for sure."

"Right?" Sora agreed. She glanced out around the courtyard again. The visions of what this place must have looked like before Maleficent's takeover still remained at the corners of her sight. "You guys, I think I know this place."

"What do you mean?" Goofy asked.

"I keep having these sort of, uh. I guess memories? Or visions or something, of what this place looked like way back. I don't really get how I'd know, though. I don't _think_ I've ever been here before."

"You're probably just hungry and it's making you see things."

"C'mon, Donald! I'm serious!"

Her frown lasted for hardly a second before she broke into laughter, and the other two did as well. The tense silence the trio had arrived in was now thankfully lifted, even if only a bit. Sora began to move towards the hatch after checking her pockets one last time. Donald and Goofy followed.

From what she could see, not much other than still air greeted them as they made their way outside. No heartless in sight—which was extremely odd, especially considering the worrying angle of the sun in the sky. The trio had arrived at sunset, which meant the heartless were only going to become stronger with the onslaught of nightfall. Sora cursed loudly.

"You've been spending too much time with Cid," Donald remarked slightly angrily. He was not unlike her mom on his rigid stance against foul (or _fowl,_ as Sora had joked him before) language. His vexation dimmed slightly when he saw why she was upset, before it returned in full force. "Oh, great."

"What are we going to do?" Sora fretted.

"Gawrsh," Goofy pondered. "I guess all we can do now is our best."

"You're not going to be doing anything at all," A recognizable voice spoke up from behind them. A small butterfly fluttered in Sora's stomach before it was quashed by dread. Riku. "Especially not her."

All three of them turned to see him strolling down the steps as nonchalantly as could be. Riku had never been what Sora would consider unattractive (but then again, it wasn't as if she'd go around calling her friends ugly, either), but he did not look good right then. 'Sickly' would be a more accurate descriptor: Riku's skin was several shades paler than last she saw him, with dark circles under his eyes. He carried himself in a way that Sora realized was meant to appear more casual than he really felt, with a rigidity to his posture she hadn't seen since the final days of Destiny Islands. The devil-may-care set of Riku's mouth clashed with the hard glint of his gaze.

What happened to him?

"…Riku?" Sora asked. Her voice came out very small. She cleared her throat. "Are you okay?"

"I've never been better."

"I don't know, you—" She cut herself off as a Dark portal opened in the corner of her sight and a little heartless stepped out. Sora summoned her keyblade in an instant, with Donald and Goofy calling forth their own weapons. Riku was slow to take his sight off of her keyblade before turning to see what it was they were focusing on. He scoffed.

"Don't worry about that thing," Riku disparaged. The little heartless did not move one inch from its spot on the dais as the Dark portal faded from existence. It seemed frozen in place as it stared at Sora, with its antennae not moving as a heartless' normally would. Instead they stood straight up with rapt attention.

"It's not attacking us," Donald noted uneasily. The sparks around the top of his staff began to ebb.

"I _said,_ don't worry about it," Riku spat. "That thing is just another traitor like everyone else in this place. Even you, Sora."

"What?" She angrily tightened her grip on her keyblade as her free hand balled into a fist. "How am I a traitor? I've never betrayed—"

"Neverland," He interrupted bluntly as he took a step towards them. "Monstro," Another step. "Traverse Town," Another. "Destiny Islands. The second me and Kairi were gone, you replaced us without a second thought with a couple of barnyard animals. She needed us, and you left her behind."

Donald's slowly extinguishing staff crackled right back to life twice as fiercely as before. " _What_ did you call us?! You little...!"

"You and Kairi are still my friends even now, Riku. Just because someone makes new friends doesn't mean they ditch their old ones," She shook her head. Sora was beginning to get a headache. "Why do you think I'm here, anyway? And what do you mean, I betrayed you in Traverse Town and back home?"

"It does mean you ditch your old friends when the first words out of your mouth upon seeing me again are 'Where are my new friends?'" He mocked. "Kairi was _right there_ and completely lifeless, and you didn't even glance at her until I forced you to look. I told you back in Monstro she had lost her Heart and the next time you saw me you didn't bother trying to ask about that."

"On the ship? I didn't see her until you moved over! I'm sorry that wasn't the first thing on my mind, but Donald and Goofy were stranded below-deck and those heartless were—"

"Awful, right? Worse than usual," Riku bitterly agreed. He glanced back at the little heartless, but it had not moved. Its glowing yellow eyes were still fixed on Sora. When he looked back at her, it took a second too long for his attention to leave her keyblade. "Trust me, I know. But that still doesn't make it okay. With Traverse Town: Do you know how happy I was to see you again? Do you know how much I worried whether or not you were dead?" Her Heart sank. "I thought we could save the worlds together. I thought we could save Kairi together. When I saw you in Traverse Town after our world ended, I thought maybe things were going to turn out okay this time. That there was room for hope. I thought we could work together to save the Darkness."

"'Save the Darkness'?"

He let out a noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a laugh.

"Do you know how much I thought of meeting up with you again? I had everything planned out—What I was going to say, what you were going to say. Little jokes I could make. I was so excited. And then you came strolling along with that keyblade and brand-new replacements for your real friends," Riku wrapped his arms around himself. "I didn't know what to think. All I knew then was that I was so angry. You abandoned us! But then I thought: 'Hey. It's okay. Sora's always been impulsive, she doesn't really think before she acts. It's not what you think it is.' And I actually believed that!"

Riku swayed a little on his feet, and the circles under his eyes only seemed to get Darker. _What is wrong with him?_

"Riku—"

"I still believed in you all the way until Neverland, did you know that?" He interrupted again. "Even after Monstro. Ugh, _Monstro._ That place made me sick. Before you pointed my keyblade at me, over a dumb useless puppet because you just had to go and add insult to injury, I still thought: 'It's fine. Everything's fine. Sora just wears her Heart on her sleeve like always,' and I hoped you would just listen to me for once. But you ditched me and Kairi for a stupid pile of wood and paint and I could feel that stupid whale's heartbeat under my toes and—and—"

He closed his eyes tightly and sharply inhaled. Sora hadn't seen him do this in years. She didn't know what to say.

"She made a charm for you. Kairi. I don't think it was finished yet, but the pieces of it are still in her pocket," Riku kept his eyes closed. "When I saw it, that's when I wised up and realized you abandoned us both. That it was worse than I thought. But I didn't want to believe that. It couldn't be real. It's funny," He said, "Well, not really funny at all. You know what I mean. But it's funny that Kairi understood that you abandoned us before I was willing to, and she doesn't even have a Heart anymore. You want to know how I knew? You made her cry on Neverland. Did you know that you made Kairi cry?"

Her Heart sank farther down again, this time settling somewhere below her stomach.

"…N-No. I didn't."

"Well, you did."

There was a pause, then. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.

"The necklace," Riku said finally when he looked back at her again. Sora spared a quick glance down at it before wrapping her free hand around it tightly enough to feel the points dig past her gloves and into her fingers. She raised her head again to see him leveling her with an accusatory glare. "You're still wearing it."

"Of course I am."

"Do you remember our promise?"

 _("It'll be a reminder. Every time you look at it, you'll think of me. And every time I look at it, I'll think of you.")_

"I do."

"It's ironic, isn't it?" Sora saw his hands start to grip into his arms tightly enough to leave little discolored trails from where they slid. A small muscle began to flash just beside his eye from where Riku worked his jaw. "Here I was, running from world to world, trying to find power in the Darkness to fulfill my promise with. Just so you'd end up throwing it in my face with that idiot puppet."

"Throwing it in your—" She gritted out the words past her teeth as Sora could feel her temper at last begin to run out. This was getting ridiculous. "That 'idiot puppet' you're talking about was Pinocchio! And he's more than just a puppet or a 'pile of wood and paint' or whatever you want to think he is, he's a person! Somebody's kid, Riku, and you tried to take him from his dad!" Sora stomped her foot. "You forgot I made a promise too. Remember that lady on the play island all those years ago? She warned me that you could fall to the Darkness one day. Turns out she was right. I—look. I'm sorry you think I left you and Kairi behind. I really didn't, I swear. I've been running around trying to keep other Pinocchios from getting separated from their Geppettos by the heartless and bad guys like Maleficent. But you can't keep doing this, Riku!"

"Can't keep doing what? Trying to do the right thing?" Riku laughed. It came out in a high, piercing noise that sounded caustic. "Darkness is nothing to be feared, Sora. It just has to be understood. But running around like you have been with that keyblade, trying to save the Light? All you're going to accomplish is blinding people with it. You're not the hero they need. They need _me._ They need someone who can teach them about real balance. And that doesn't mean you or Maleficent."

He exhaled harshly, and Sora could see his nostrils flare as some of the tension in his face began to subside.

"Now take it off."

She blinked once, twice.

"What?"

"The necklace. Take it off. I gave it to you to keep a promise with, and all you've done is break that promise over and over again," His voice lowered into a vengeful hiss. "It means nothing to you. So take it off."

Sora swallowed against the bile on the back of her tongue. She could feel her jaw begin to grind as her fury suddenly became too much to bear, and Sora used her free hand to yank against the chain of her necklace.

"Alright, fine," Sora lost her patience and slid a hand through the hilt of her keyblade so that it dangled on her arm as she reached behind her head to undo the clasp. "Fine! If you want it back so badly, then take it!"

She hurled it at the ground, and the necklace made a tinkling noise as it landed near his feet. His mouth widened into a slow, Dark grin as he knelt down to pick it up.

"Excellent choice of words, Sora," He replied. He glanced down momentarily to shut the clasp and spun the chain so that the crown pendant was at the base of his throat. Sora's Heart sank even more, if it was possible, at the sight of it on him. Their eyes met and his grin got wider. "'If you want something, why not take it?'"

With that, he raised an outstretched hand. There was a humming feeling in the air then, and Sora realized it was coming from her keyblade when she felt it begin to shake in her grasp. It was coming to life the exact same way it did back in Wonderland. Sora desperately held onto it with both hands and all her might as her Heart lurched fearfully.

And finally, the keyblade gave way.

It disappeared from her hand with a tinkling chime and a burst of Light, and the trio all gave exclamations of surprise when the keyblade reappeared in Riku's own grip. He laughed again.

"I knew it! It feels great to have it back," At her bewildered expression, Riku nodded, while continuing to laugh. "That's right. It was _my_ keyblade all along. I'm the one who had the Mark, I'm the one who dreamed of it and all the worlds out there first. Why shouldn't it be me?"

"I—But—How?" She begged. Sora tried throwing her hand out and flicking her wrist repeatedly in hopes the keyblade would reappear. She started to panic when it didn't work and wrenched her head over to see Riku hoisting the keyblade over his shoulder exactly like how Sora would. He smirked. "I…I fought my way through all the worlds with the keyblade."

Saying that made Sora feel like a small child throwing a tantrum. Like she was denying reality.

"You were just the delivery girl."

With those words, Riku turned and began to walk away.

The trio watched him go back up the stairs towards the dais and breeze past the little heartless that even now had not moved one inch. Donald huffed out a resigned sigh.

"Goofy, let's go. We have to remember our mission," He said. Sora turned to him with a desperate look. Donald did not meet her eyes.

"What?" Goofy replied. He glanced between Donald, Sora, and Riku's retreating back. "I know the king told us to follow the key and all, but…" He trailed off.

 _Please don't leave me,_ Sora pleaded internally. _Please don't go. Don't leave me alone._

"I don't like him either, Goofy," Donald acknowledged with no small measure of chagrin. "I don't like him one bit. But we have to stick with him."

"It's not just that," Goofy took off his hat and started to nervously wring it in his hands. He glanced over at the little heartless with worry. "We can't just leave Sora here alone. She ain't got any way to defend herself without the keyblade."

"You're right," Donald agreed. "What should we do?"

Up on the dais Sora could see Riku's head raise slightly before he turned around.

"I have an idea," He said. And with the keyblade in one hand and small trails of Darkness following his outstretched fingertips in the other hand, Riku summoned a Dark portal. "Give me a second."

He left, and the trio were wary at the sight of the portal.

"Gawrsh," Goofy wondered. "A keyblade wielder that uses Darkness?"

Donald shrugged. "The King told us to follow him."

Sora was still trying to call the keyblade back to her hand. It still didn't work.

"Stop trying that," She saw Riku step out of the Dark portal with something clutched in his hand. Sora squinted to see what it was, and felt her jaw drop when she realized. "It's beginning to get embarrassing. Here," He declared as he tossed the wooden sword at her feet. The dull clattering noise was the only thing to pierce the silence of the courtyard. "You can go play hero with this."

And then Riku turned to leave for the final time.

Donald moved to follow him, and it felt like a piece of Sora's Heart broke apart as he did. Donald stilled for a moment when he didn't hear Goofy's footsteps follow.

"Goofy," Donald reminded.

Goofy looked back towards Riku with a frown before his eyes fell on the wooden sword. He shook his head.

"That's not gonna be any use in—" Goofy stopped himself. Donald finally began to walk away to catch up with Riku and the keyblade. Sora didn't look over at him when he turned to her, then. She was too focused on the wooden sword laying on the pavement.

"Jus' wait in the gummi ship, okay? The sun's goin' down, it's gonna be way too dangerous for you to stick around out here without the keyblade."

She gave no response. Finally, Goofy left too. And with one glance back upwards at him and Donald walking up the dais' steps—

— _And she remembered feeling so_ stupid. _This was what she got for being careless.—_

— " _My name is Master Aqua. I train under Master Eraqus."—_

Sora collapsed to the ground and pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. In the dark behind her closed eyelids, she first saw starbursts of color, and they settled into shapes. People. She groaned in pain as her head began to pound.

These were not her memories, Sora was sure of that. So what was she seeing?

From far off, a bestial roar resounded through the open air.

"What am I going to do?"

No keyblade. No friends. All she had to her name was a bunch of potions and ethers.

" _What are you so afraid of?"_

 _Sora raised her hands with incredulous confusion. Again? She whipped around to look at the dream-Selphie and the dream-Wakka._

" _Seriously, you guys, what is with these questions?" Sora demanded. "This already started off really weird and you're not helping."_

 _None of her dream-friends answered. They only matched her furrowed brows with varying levels of indifference. If that dream voice thing was trying to convince her this wasn't a dream, Sora decided with a glance around the setting of the play island, it wasn't doing a good job of it. This whole thing was way too surreal and those three were_ not _acting like how they would in waking life. She sagged as she scrubbed a hand over her face._

" _Okay, okay," Sora relented. "You wanted me to tell you about myself. Got it."_

 _She breathed in. "I'm afraid of being indecisive. I know Riku and Kairi—and all of you guys at one time or another—tease me about being brash and running into situations all the time without any preparation or care or anything. The truth is, I know I could probably hang back for a minute or so to actually plan out what I'm going to do. I know I risk messing up everything even worse when I just run in. But if something happens and someone gets hurt, sometimes it's just seconds that decides if they're going to turn out okay. I'm afraid of ever being one of those people that freezes up and doesn't know what to do when there's a crisis."_

 _Sora turned to dream-Tidus. "I want to be the difference. Whenever something's wrong, you hear about those people in the crowd that just sorta stand around awkwardly when someone's in trouble? I'm afraid of being just like them one day. So I force myself to run in."_

 _All three of her dream-friends were quiet after the other two questions, but this time the silence felt embarrassing after revealing that part of herself. Sora shoved her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt._

" _So, um. Yeah."_

 _The world began to shift under her feet. Dream-Tidus and the others faded into nothing, and soon the rest of the play island disappeared along with them. Sora scrambled to make sure she didn't trip as the world continued to writhe, and then finally settle as her new surroundings revealed themselves._

 _It was as if Sora was in the middle of the sky. It was a bright, sunny sky, marked here and there with white clouds that just barely touched their doppelgängers and spanned off into infinity. It was beautiful, she thought, heartwrenchingly so—but there was some eerie nature to the place she couldn't put her finger on. She looked down._

 _The ground had formed some sort of a mirror. Sora kneeled down to see herself more closely and watched her reflection do the same. And then, it shifted._

 _For a moment she looked exactly the same in the mirror. And then she looked a little older, taller, with different clothes. And then another set of clothes. And another, and this time she was back to her current age. Her reflection shifted again._

 _She skimmed through what seemed like a thousand different appearances—one second she looked like some sort of a vampire thing with black wings unfurling from her back, and the next she became a mermaid. And then a toy, with plastic arms and joints and hair, a pirate with a gold tooth, a grey-striped bipedal catlike thing, and then a yellow-eyed creature just like the ones Sora had fought minutes ago. She shivered. And then her reflection shifted again, back to her slightly older self._

 _This time, there was metals of all colors slowly spreading over her fingertips, crawling up her arms. Sora could see it inching up her ankles and then up her forelegs. One metallic tendril snaked its way over her bare throat. Sora reached for her neck to make sure it wasn't there and felt only skin and the cold metal of her necklace. Her reflection did the same. The tendril exploded._

 _Sora scrambled to her feet and desperately raked her hands all over to make sure the reflection wasn't coming true before cautiously leaning over to see what happened next. By now her reflection had grown some sort of armor fragments of countless different shades of metal, and Sora watched as the growing helmet obscured her horrified expression from view. Her breathing was uneven as she wrenched her head back up to focus instead on the distant clouds. She looked down for a split-second in terrified curosity, and her reflection was normal._

" _This…isn't real. Is it?"_

 _ **Only if you choose to make it so.**_

 _Somehow, hearing her own thoughts talk back was the least weird thing about this dream so far._

 _ **You wanted to broaden your horizons and see what awaits beyond the shores of your home. Your friends and loved ones are most important to you, and you can't bear to see them disappear. And what you fear most is being unable to act.**_

" _Yes?"_

 _ **Those with good Hearts are best equipped to trust their judgement, and yet they so often trust others' judgement over their own. Make sure you never fall into this quandary, and what you fear most will never come to pass. All the answers you will ever need are within you. All the power you will ever need is within you. Both merely sleep until you learn the means to beckon them forth.**_

 _Sora could feel herself just barely begin to wake up. The Voice continued on._

 _ **Your adventure begins at midday. Keep a steady pace and trust yourself, and you will come through fine.**_

She took a deep breath. As she exhaled, she imagined all of her fear and heartbreak and anxiety and every little worry in her mind leaving her with it.

 _("Maybe this is what we've been practicing for. The real test.")_

She had to trust herself. She had to keep going. Kairi needed her help, and no matter what Goofy had said back in Neverland Sora refused to trust Riku's judgement in helping her any longer. And she absolutely refused to stand around in the gummi ship and wait on anyone, even if the keyblade abandoned her.

Sora slowly got to her feet and picked up the wooden sword as she wiped her cheek. She began to walk at a steady pace towards the citadel of Hollow Bastion.

She had to save her friends. She had to save the worlds. Even if the keyblade did not choose her for anything at all in the end, she chose herself for the task.

And that would be the difference.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _And Aqua had said those things—she had called them Unversed—they'd come after her again. Kairi clutched the pendant in her hand. But next time, she'd have a spell to keep them from getting her. A spell, magic, on her! She couldn't be afraid knowing that. Kairi couldn't quell the grin on her face._

" _Hey, Grandma?"_

 _She looked over, "Hmm? What is it?"_

" _Could you tell me that story again?"_

" _Again, dear?" She chuckled._

" _Please?"_

 _Her grandmother sighed, though not unkindly. "Very well, then" She complied, and Kairi squeezed her hand in gratitude. They continued to walk down the steps, through the courtyard, framed by the light of the setting sun. And her grandmother began the familiar tale._

"Please, just _stop,_ " Kairi implored to no one in particular. "I don't…I don't want to remember."

She didn't want to remember those awful creatures that had pursued her on that fateful day she'd met Master Aqua—and Kairi struggled with the bitter taste in her mouth at the reveal that it was her spell that made Kairi lose everything—she didn't want to remember even happy times or harmless little details of Hollow Bastion's past ( _Radiant Garden,_ Kairi had seen in her memory when Sora walked past a broken-away chunk of a sign that had originally read: _Jolly Holiday Bakery Café,_ subtitled _The Finest in Radiant Garden_ ). Because remembering the little things would lead to remembering the big things. The things that might have (no, Kairi corrected herself mentally, the things that must have) led to the fall of Radiant Garden. The things that led to the carcass of Radiant Garden being resurrected partway into the desiccated shambling beast of Hollow Bastion, an undead monstrosity that Maleficent was singlehandedly keeping alive through magic and might.

The things that had kept her up through many a sleepless night, that smelled like smoke and muttered _Ghost Heart_. _Eclipse._

After momentarily checking in on Sora again, who was honest to goodness going through with her fool's errand of trying to make her way through Hollow Bastion entirely alone with no keyblade, to Kairi's lack of surprise and excess of dismay, she then took a moment to see if anything had happened to her body yet. With Riku gone and the little heartless having left the room, she had a morbid curiosity in what lied in store for her.

The heartless were already pulling her body through a Dark portal, with Maleficent looking on and surveying their work as they arrived into another chamber. Compared to the alleys and streets Sora was walking through, paved with memory and shadows that winked when nobody was looking, the chamber Kairi was deposited in didn't stir her mind at all. Huh. Perhaps it was Maleficent's own addition to the castle?

That idea made sense. The red-and-blue rug she was lying on was clearly much newer, and the blue walls were devoid of any cobwebs or claw marks. Even the polished metal braziers that danced with blue flames didn't have a single flaw. And then Kairi glanced over and saw all the other Princesses of Heart in their glass caskets in the walls Riku had described.

She counted. Three on the left, three on the right. All of them filled. So where was Kairi supposed to go?

"I'm sure the boy has already spoken to you of this place," A cold voice remarked from somewhere just out of Kairi's sight from her spot on the floor. Maleficent stepped into view and glared down at Kairi's body. She continued, "And likely divulged his ill-conceived plans to dismantle it and my reign as well. He always was such an open book."

" _I thought you of all people would take care not to tell her too much,"_ Kairi's blood would have ran cold if Sora were close by when another voice spoke up from somewhere out of sight, half thought and half sound. The hooded man. _"She's proven to be a liability. And why do I spy no heartless attacking the girl outside? It would be far easier now than ever to take her out of the equation entirely, yet all your servants do is watch."_

Maleficent's head turned towards where Kairi supposed he stood. "And watch they shall continue to do until she inevitably makes her way here. You've missed quite a bit since your last visit."

" _Enlighten me."_

Maleficent told him of the details of hers and Riku's last conversation (where it turned out he'd unwittingly revealed that Kairi's Heart was inside Sora's, and Kairi dearly wished she at least had access to a hand so she could slap it against her own forehead) and Maleficent's work in capturing the remaining Princess of Heart, Belle, whose companion was now rampaging the castle grounds in search for her.

Maleficent looked down at Kairi again, as if imagining her in her own niche alongside the other Princesses of Heart. "So you can see why I stay my hand with the girl. It is best to concentrate my resources with the Beast. I will admit I am rather impressed with his efficiency in striking down my heartless, only the larger ones are slowing him down. Perhaps one of them will turn him soon."

" _And the boy?"_

"Last I saw, he was walking into the citadel with the king's fools by his side and the keyblade in hand."

" _Take care that he doesn't become a liability himself. But don't strike him down entirely either: Recent ones with Marks on their Hearts are extremely rare to come by now as it is. He will be useful even with thoughts of treachery."_

"I know."

"… _Was that a note of sentimentality I detected?"_

"It was a note of regret," Maleficent defended as she snapped back up. "The boy didn't make for much of a right hand, but he would make a lovely heartless."

" _That he would,"_ The hooded man chuckled. _"That he would. Now come along and show me your progress on our little project up there, preferably out of the girl's hearing range."_

"With pleasure."

Project? Kairi mentally shook her head. She supposed it didn't matter now. At least it was guaranteed that Sora wouldn't be harmed. Yet. But even with that in mind, she couldn't resist checking in one more time. Even with the risk of remembering more.

 _Her vision alternated between blurry and clear, and Sora took advantage of the fact that she was alone to wipe her eyes._

 _She hadn't encountered any heartless yet. Well, that wasn't true, Sora inwardly corrected herself as she heard the distant scuffle of clawed feet from not too far behind. She wiped her eyes once more before turning around again. This time, the little heartless tried hiding uselessly behind a broken-away chunk of fencing. Its antennae were sticking out, and Sora bit her lip to try and stop her watery smile when she watched a tiny gnarled hand reach up to pull the antennae down._

" _For the last time, I know you're there. Just come on out already," She said. It continued to hide._

 _After one more uneasy glance around the empty alley—Seriously, where were the heartless? Wasn't this place supposed to be stuffed to the brim with them? Had Donald and Goofy encountered any when they followed Riku? Why wasn't this one attacking her? Why was it_ following _her? She had so many questions, and frankly this was getting weird—Sora raised her arms and let them flop down to her sides. She figured that maybe this little heartless was one streak of good luck she shouldn't turn down. Especially considering that she didn't have her keyblade._

" _Look. See this thing?" She waved around her toy sword. "No keyblade. I don't think I can hurt you right now even if I wanted to. Which I don't. You're really cute and I don't_ think _you're as ferocious as the others? So, um. Don't fight me and I won't try and fight you. How about we be friends instead?"_

 _One antenna popped up inquisitively at this. Sora took this as a cue to cautiously approach._

" _Yeah, friends. You won't have to worry about hiding when you follow me. That sound good?"_

 _After several beats, the little heartless finally took a hesitant step out. And then another. It ducked its head slightly as it peeked at Sora when it stepped out, as if shy. She squatted down to be eye-level with the creature and held out a hand, noting how the little heartless drew a little closer. And closer again._

" _I'm not sure how heartless greet each other, or if they do at all," Sora supposed. Maybe this was pushing it, but it'd help to make sure this little heartless was at least confirmed to be civilized compared to its cohorts she'd encountered before. "But people do. This is how we say hello, by shaking hands."_

 _The little heartless angled its head to one side and then tried waving its hand from side to side in front of itself._

" _No! Not like that," Sora laughed. She gestured her hand towards the heartless again. "Here. Hold onto my hand," The little heartless took another step closer and grabbed on. Its gnarled claws were cold, and its points poked into her skin, but the sheer novelty of what was happening mattered to Sora more than the particulars. And there was the fact that the little heartless' hands were so small it grabbed onto only two of her fingers. That part was especially cute. "And shake. Up-down. Just like this."_

 _And they did._

 _Sora let go to rest her hands on her knees and said, "There you go. Good job."_

 _The little heartless quirked its head again and trailed a claw down its cheek, before pointing towards Sora. Her eyes widened as she hurriedly wiped her face one last time before standing up._

" _It's nothing. Really, I'm fine," She proffered before becoming aware again of the wooden sword in her hand. "Or, I'm fine so long as no other heartless show up. Mean ones, anyway. Now let's go."_

 _As the unlikely pair walked side by side down the alleyway towards what seemed to be the main thoroughfare, given the increasing proximity of the citadel's main building and the torn sun-stained banners now lining the open courtyard, Sora finally saw where all the heartless had gone._

 _She had to quickly cover her ears as another bellowing growl rang out through the air, and ran the last few steps out of the alleyway to see a large creature rearing back on its hind legs as it completely destroyed heartless left and right, with more trying to dogpile it by climbing on its caped back._

 _Sora couldn't help being taken aback for a minute at the sheer power the beast displayed as it swiped even one paw the size of a steering wheel; Larger heartless were forced back with gashes down their fronts that spilled out Dark smoke, with smaller heartless being destroyed entirely. It gave a shuddering snarl as it shook off the heartless that tried to climb on with the same deftness as a hound shaking off water from its coat, the beast's cape beginning to tear as the last of the heartless refused to let go. The stragglers were quickly stomped to oblivion with a clawed foot when they fell._

 _It roared again, and Sora did not cover her ears in time. For close to a minute all she heard was a ringing noise as the beast swiped again, and this time the larger heartless fell with their smaller cohorts. But it wasn't quite as successful as the last, and one armored heartless was able to leave a sizeable wound on the beast's forearm before succumbing. The beast gave a pained growl as it swiped once more._

 _That sound was what brought Sora out of her stupor. It was then that she noticed the beast's favoring of its other arm, the slight limp as it charged forward into another herd. The thin line of red framing its bared teeth._

 _She had to do something, but what? Sora gave a bitter glance down at the wooden sword in her hand._

 _("You'll never make it like that!")_

 _Magic! That was it! She had to still have access to her magic, even without her keyblade to focus it. Even Donald could still call upon his somewhat when Phil took his staff for training._

 _To test it out, she pointed her wooden sword at a random heartless clawing at the beast's feet and tried firing off a quick flame spell._

 _It worked. At her shout, a ball of fire burst forth and smacked the heartless. Though it did not fell the creature, it left it visibly damaged, and the heartless' movements were now trailed with Dark smoke seeping from its newfound wounds. Another stomp by the beast, and the heartless disappeared._

 _Which yielded another observation: The beast's slaying of the heartless was not marked by the Light of a Heart being freed like all the other times Sora and her friends had fought heartless. What did that mean?_

 _The sinking feeling in her chest had returned at the thought, and Sora shook her head with more force than necessary. She couldn't think about it right now when Kairi needed her help._

 _Sora gave a glance back at the little heartless, who hung back a little as Sora started to approach the beast. "Stay here, okay?" She told it. And without another word, Sora ran into the fray._

 _Fire. Frost. Lightning. The beast's steps were now trailed by more than just heartless, but magic as well. The wooden sword was by no means as effective as a focuser for her magic as the keyblade was, but it was better than nothing. It didn't hurt that as she approached, the heartless seemed to deliberately avoid her, a fact that the beast noticed quickly and took advantage of._

 _Another swipe, another spell, and the heartless had been finished. No more had arrived after Sora reached the scene, and compounded with the fact that the creatures had avoided her in the first place led to both her and the beast being confused._

 _The beast grumbled out a thanks as she handed him a couple of potions, before his eyes fell on the little heartless and he snarled again. Sora was nearly thrown back when an overlarge paw pushed her out of the way, and she hurriedly stood in his path with her arms outstretched before he could reach her friend._

" _Step aside!"_

" _No, wait!" Sora called out. The little heartless had taken to cowering behind her legs. She desperately pointed to it. "It's not gonna hurt us! See?"_

 _The beast looked back and forth between Sora and the little heartless with no small measure of suspicion. The little heartless continued to cower, and this time Sora was sure it wouldn't want to hurt anyone._

" _Those odious fiends avoided you during the fight as well. And they only ceased to pursue me after you arrived. Are you their friend?"_

" _No! No, I," She glanced down at the little heartless, unsure. "…I'm not. Except for this one, it's not like the rest. Can't you tell?"_

 _The beast inspected the little heartless some more as it hesitantly held out its hand to shake. He did not hold out his own in return. "It's not attacking us. Why?"_

" _I honestly don't have a clue. All this one's been doing is following me around for some reason, but it shook my hand a few minutes ago," Sora said. "I know you think it might be as vicious as the others were, but I swear it's not. It's different. I know it is."_

 _At her words, the beast paused._

" _It's different, hm?" The beast stood back up. "I know a fair few things about that. I thank you for your help, but I must go."_

" _Why? Where are you going?"_

" _Into the castle. When our world fell into Darkness, Belle was taken. I vowed I would find her again no matter the cost. That's why I'm here."_

" _Hey, I'm here for someone important to me too. Maybe we can team up," Sora suggested. "I know I'm probably not as good on the fighting side of things like you can do right now, but I've got magic! And the heartless totally do stay away from me for whatever reason, so that'll help us get in there faster."_

" _Hm. Alright. But be sure your companion does no harm to us."_

" _Got it," She replied as she waved for the little heartless to follow. As the motley crew made their way up the citadel's steps, Sora realized they had never properly introduced themselves. "I'm Sora, by the way. This little guy, uh," She glanced down at the little heartless. "It doesn't exactly have a name. I'll come up with one later maybe. But what's your name?"_

" _I had a name once, long ago. But I am not fit for it now in this form. If you must call me something, then refer to me as 'The Beast'."_

"The Beast, huh?" Kairi muttered to herself. Memories raced around the fore of her thoughts again, and she felt as though she were beginning to drown.

" _The Estheims told me they saw one of those beasts last night," Her dad said as he finished preparing dinner and turned off the stovetop. "Nearly came up onto their patio. Nora said she almost gave her boy nursemaid's elbow trying to pull him inside to safety in time."_

" _Their_ patio? _" Her mom asked incredulously as she set the table. Kairi peeked over the edge of the tabletop and made her fork pretend to walk on its tines around her plate. It ambled from side to side like one of the penguins in the zoo. "How much longer until they start trying to get into people's homes?"_

 _Lea snuck into the room smoothly while their mom's back was turned and slid into the seat like he'd always been there. "Not much longer, they're getting bold. Crazy stuff, huh?"_

 _Both of their parents did a double-take, before their dad questioned, "Lea, where have you been? It's an hour past when the king recommended everyone go indoors until those things have been dealt with."_

" _Just hanging out with Isa."_

 _That was what he said, but his face turned slightly pink._

" _You like-like him," Kairi said without even looking up, her fork continuing to do its march. Lea nearly choked as his skin now began to match his hair._

" _Do not!" Lea sputtered. Their parents shared a glance._

" _You know, Lea, you can bring him over sometime for lunch. Introduce us," Their mom assured. "No need to hang out past curfew and risk getting hurt."_

" _Yeah, sure, whatever," He replied without meeting their eyes. And then he tried changing the subject. "So those things are coming out earlier now, or are they just wandering around closer to people? Aren't those nerds in the castle supposed to be figuring out how to get rid of them whenever they have Kairi over for the day? I mean, she's there almost all the time now."_

" _Lea," Their dad warned. "Respect the king and his apprentices. They're not 'nerds', they're scientists. And yes, they're trying to solve it."_

" _Then why is the problem only getting worse?"_

 _Neither of their parents had an answer ready for that._

 _Only when both of their parents had dinner on the table did their dad say, with the topic clearly now off-limits for the evening, "The king and his apprentices have our best interests in mind. Whatever is going on is going to end soon, I'm sure of it. We just have to trust them."_

* * *

 **RIKU**

It felt _fantastic_ to have his keyblade back. But Riku didn't much care for the accessories it came with.

He was speaking, of course, about Sora's lackeys. Hangers-on. Suck-ups. Whatever terminology one preferred, what was undeniable was that they were a nuisance. Though, Riku thought with amusement as he walked through the old patrol path the dais had led to, it was rather nice to know Sora was as alone as he had been in his time here. Maybe she'd learn a valuable lesson or two.

But it came at the cost of listening to the duck jabber on incessantly. At least the dog was quiet.

"—But see, the guy running the snack shack, one of Goofy's relatives named, uh, what was it, Goofy?"

"Cousin Wernher von Goof," The dog replied morosely.

"That's it! Wernher von Goof got really mad 'cuz neither me nor the king were wearing a whole outfit. 'No shirt, no shoes, no service' He said, so me and the king realized, 'Hey! I'm wearing a shirt, he's got a pair of pants and some shoes, let one of us just borrow the other's clothes for a minute so us and the girls could have a nice picnic at the beach when they met up with us.' We drew tailfeathers to see who would have to go without. I,of course, drew the longest feather," He shimmied his tailfeathers to accentuate his point at this, "So the king had to go butt-naked! He was trying to hide wherever he could—"

"Can you just be quiet?" Riku nearly barked. The duck recoiled, but the dog looked only mildly surprised.

The duck crossed his arms petulantly. "…I know Sorawould have laughed at that story."

"I'm not Sora."

"Yeah, well," He protested, and Riku had to strain to try and understand even a fraction of what he was saying. His accent was like nails on a chalkboard. "You could at least try to get along. We're in this together."

"No we're not," Riku replied. " _You're_ the ones tagging along after _me._ I didn't ask for you to follow me at all. Actually, I'd prefer it if you didn't."

"But the king said we had to follow you!"

"Oh really?" That blind willingness to follow orders reminded him of himself in his very first days of his work for Maleficent. Riku scowled. Gullible. "You should consider not following every single order you get, then."

He was beginning to lose what little tolerance he had for these two in the first place. Riku stopped in his tracks and summoned a Dark portal, ignoring their noises of concern as he did so. He also ignored the duck's cries for him to wait up before going through and closing the portal quickly. As he stepped into the hallway outside Kairi's room, Riku took a short moment to bask in the quiet before opening the door. How was Sora able to stand that thing's voice all day every day? Riku would have lost his mind within a few hours at the most.

The second he walked in, he stopped. Though really, Riku realized furiously, he should have expected this.

Because Kairi's body was gone.

He hastened towards the bed and peeled off his glove before placing his bare hand on the imprint she left in the sheets. It was still warm, but only slightly so. Maleficent and her heartless minions had to have moved quickly.

Riku called forth another Dark portal and stepped through into the cathedral. There was nobody there. And, he noticed, the entrance to the chamber where the Princesses of Heart were was concealed. Something had to be going on in there.

"Maleficent," He called out angrily as he stomped towards the stretch of wall where the chamber entrance hid. Riku balled his ungloved hand into a fist and knocked on the wall angrily. "Maleficent! Come on out, I know you have Kairi!"

There was no answer. His words echoed back at him throughout the chamber as if in mocking. Riku tried opening a Dark portal to the chamber and found he couldn't. The Darkness coalesced around his fingertips, followed his movement, but it did not form a portal to the chamber. Maleficent must have done something to the room itself to forbid him from being able to.

Riku could feel his hackles raise as his fury reached a fevered pitch. He had finally gotten the keyblade back after staying up to make sure Kairi's body was safe for two days, finally gained the power that was promised to him after Maleficent had no doubt withdrawn all the power she had given him for his work, his foolishness, and Riku couldn't take this anymore. Things had finally begun to go right for him after all this time, and now he was going to lose everything again. Maleficent could be doing anything to Kairi in there.

He began to violently kick at the wall, hit it, shove it, do anything he could think of to get it to give away. The keyblade came to his hand with a burst of Light— _Light,_ he thought with bitterness, why did it have to be Light?—and Riku began to attack the wall.

"MALEFICENT!" _Clang! Ping!_ " _MALEFICENT!_ GET OUT HERE RIGHT NOW!"

Nobody answered. Riku was seeing red.

He kept going. An upwards strike at the wall with the keyblade was marked with a _clink!_ Riku did it again and again, alternating between showering himself with sparks and throwing himself at the wall with abandon.

"YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM ME, MALEFICENT! I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE! I KNOW YOU TOOK HER! COME _OUT! COME OUT OF THERE NOW, YOU COWARD!_ " His formerly unmarked skin was turning red with scrapes and deepening bruises. His ungloved hand's knuckles were weeping with blood that smeared on the wall before disappearing. Some small part of himself in the very back of his mind, disconnected from everything and watching himself do this, was pretty sure some of the bones of that hand were starting to fracture.

He howled out a noise full of impotent fury and threw himself at the wall again, this time sliding down against it gracelessly.

Riku felt like a dog trapped on a chain. He had his keyblade back now, opening this door should be nothing for him. When Sora had it, she could go anywhere she pleased, unlock any door. So what the hell was so different with now? Wasn't the keyblade supposed to be all-powerful? Wasn't that what the reports said?

His breath came out through his teeth in shudders as his hands sagged to his sides. The gritted texture of the wall dragged at his flesh as Riku dropped to the floor and he felt desperate tears sneak their way down his face. They felt almost cold as they passed the tender skin on his cheek. The realization that he was crying, caused by _Maleficent,_ of all people, made him lose his mind all over again. Riku scrambled to his feet and summoned his keyblade back from where it had fallen to the floor with him.

"MALEFICENT!" He had abandoned the fists and trying to throw himself. "MALEFICENT! _MALEFICENT!_ " Riku heard his voice crack for the first time in a year, and it broke into a rasping scream. It only made him angrier. He struck the wall with the keyblade again and again. "COME OUT!" Again. "COME OUT! COME OUT, COME OUT, COME OUT, COME _OUT, COME OUT, COME OUT, COME OUT—_ "

"What on earth? Stop that this instant, boy. You're acting as feral as that odious creature outside."

The sound Riku let out was entirely unintelligible as he swerved around and lunged.

His keyblade was caught in a bright green forcefield before it could even come close to Maleficent. As Riku tugged on it desperately so he could pull it away and try to strike again, she gave an appalled stare at his state.

"Good heavens, what is the matter with you?"

"What's the matter with me?" His scathing laughter came out in a croak. "Just answer my question for once, Maleficent! Where did you take Kairi?"

"Somewhere quite safe from yours or that foolish girl's reach," Maleficent spied his keyblade hovering in the air in the grip of her magic, and it disappeared with a flash of Light back into Riku's hold. "I see you got your keyblade back."

"That's not an answer!" Riku yelled. He reared back the keyblade and hurled it at her with all his strength. She caught it again.

"Of course it is," Maleficent said. He summoned his keyblade, hurled it again, and still it caught. He summoned it again. "Stop acting like a rabid animal and think, Riku. Where do you imagine I took her?"

"I _imagine_ you're hiding her behind that wall!"

"Precisely. It's the most fortified area of the citadel, why wouldn't I choose it?" Maleficent shook her head, and her horns swayed with the movement. Riku went back to trying uselessly to break the barrier, unsure of what else to do. She sighed. "Really, now. What was it you told that girl when she continued trying to summon your keyblade back to her? Ah, yes: 'Stop trying that. It's beginning to get embarrassing.' I'm inclined to share the sentiment now. Indeed," Maleficent chuckled at his askance expression. "I know all that goes on inside and outside this citadel. Command of the heartless comes with a number of perks."

His eyes widened, and Riku lunged again. He smacked against the forcefield and this time Riku was catapulted straight to the far wall. The back of his head collided with the stone bricks with a sickening _crack!_

"Oh, dear. I told you to stop that, didn't I?" His eyelids began to droop, and it felt as though Riku's back was on fire for several seconds until all of his pain was swept away by a wave of green magic. His eyelids drooped more, and he could just barely see the bottom of Maleficent's robes come closer as his broken skin healed. She knelt down and Riku could feel a hand in his hair. "It truly is a pity, though. I really have only ever spoken the truth to you, though I will admit I stretched it as far as I could at times."

As he began to pass out, the only thing Riku wanted at that moment more than anything was for Maleficent to just shut up.

"But I did not need to stretch the truth at all when I said—"

The next time Riku opened his eyes, he was falling.

Was this a dream? This didn't feel like he was dreaming, but the situation itself was intensely surreal. It was like Riku was spiraling down a black void, farther and further, but despite how black the vacuum was there was no Dark to be found. It was merely the regular darkness for once. But before he could savor it (though he almost felt ashamed at the desire to) there was a spark of Light from somewhere far below his feet. It grew.

It grew and grew, and it soon became almost overwhelmingly bright. Riku had to shield himself from it so he wouldn't be blinded, and spots danced behind his eyelids. It was only when he heard wingbeats run past himself that he slowly opened his eyes again and lowered his hand, which was devoid of his keyblade.

It was birds. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, with every last one carrying away a little piece of whatever material it was that had hidden that Light from view. Doves, Riku thought they might be, but he wasn't sure. They kept flying up and he continued to fall down. He finally dared to look towards that Light that had left spots in his vision.

His Heart skipped a beat, two beats, and then it soared.

The Light that he was falling towards was a giant circular stained-glass window, just like what Sora had described seeing in that fateful dream with his keyblade back on the islands.

It was comprised mainly of purples and blues, with the occasional touch of yellow exactly like the sun trying to peek out from between thunderheads. The composition of it was dominated by the image of a vast white door, finely formed and inlaid with small windows of stained glass on either side and at the top of its crest. Behind the door were three circles; For the two circles on either side of the door, one was comprised of more yellow than blues and purples. And the other was comprised of more blues and purples than yellow. Behind the door, in the uppermost circle, stretched open a bright teal eye with a slitted pupil—the same eye that was placed on the hilt of Soul Eater.

The left circle was the lighter of the two with how much yellow it had. A large gold heart-like symbol that ended in three points was in the center—it by no means matched the heartless symbol, it was too angular, but it was similar in silhouette. Nestled under its eaves were two light blue circles, containing portraits: Sora and Kairi.

The right circle was comparatively darker in its color palette. Contrasting the color of the other side's three-pointed heart, this one was entirely midnight blue. Beneath its own eaves were two violet circles, also containing portraits, though much less innately familiar than Sora's and Kairi's: A man and a woman. It only took him two seconds to remember where the man's visage was from before Riku's Heart squeezed just slightly—The man on the shore from so long ago. The man who had Bequeathed him his keyblade.

What did all of this mean?

 _ **Nothing, yet. It is meant for you as you may one day be, but not for you as you are.**_

Was he finally going crazy? Had spending so long in Hollow Bastion caused voices in his head?

 _ **Though that forsaken place is poisonous to your Heart, the Darkness can only cloud your thoughts so much. But do not mistake a Dark Heart for a balm to the mind, either.**_

"What's," Riku's voice wavered as it began to dawn on him that this wasn't turning out to be what he'd hoped for. What he'd done so much for. The Light of the stained glass wasn't getting any closer no matter how much he continued to fall. "What's happening? Am I falling in place?"

 _ **Yes.**_

"What did I do wrong?"

At this, the voice paused.

 _ **Everything.**_

* * *

 **KAIRI**

Sora, The Beast, and the little heartless were now inside the castle, and the memories only got worse.

They reached the entrance hall once The Beast forced open the doors _(They didn't use to always look like that,_ a corner of her mind mused, _with all those vines and thorns)_ and walked inside. The entrance hall itself was absolutely not how she remembered, didn't want to remember—

 _The entrance hall was glimmering with light in every corner, and Kairi swung her head around this way and that to try and take it all in. On either side of her, Apprentice Even and her grandmother were discussing the particulars of longer-term testing._

" _I just wanted to reiterate how pleased all of us apprentices were that you and Miss Kairi agreed to her extended testing, Miss…?"_

" _Emi Hisaki," Her grandmother replied, "But please, just call me Emi."_

" _Certainly, Miss Emi. Now I must say that his majesty King Ansem was quite relieved that your family agreed to Miss Kairi assisting us in our work, so much so that we thought we should show our gratitude in some way: When she's not in testing we could assign Miss Kairi a royal tutor to help get her an early start on schooling, and we could allow access to the library for both of you for when we must do isolated testing and whenever Miss Kairi has free time. And I believe you mentioned on your walk here that you and Miss Kairi shared an interest in gardening? The royal grounds could also be open to you, if you'd like. The wall should be able to keep those fiends out, but we have guards patrolling every half-hour interval just in case."_

" _It sounds lovely," Her grandmother agreed. "And I know my daughter would be happy about the tutoring. But what would long-term testing entail? I'm not sure if they're the cause, but not long after she had begun the shorter testing periods Kairi's begun to have nightmares."_

 _Apprentice Even stood up straighter at that, if possible, and enquired urgently, "Nightmares? Of what sort? How often?"_

" _Every couple days," Kairi spoke up._

" _What are they about?"_

" _Can't 'member."_

 _Apprentice Even relaxed minutely at this, not enough for her grandmother to notice. But Kairi could see how the Light in him experienced a momentary majority over the Darkness in his Heart before relaxing back into its familiar pattern of a perfectly halved split. "Well, us apprentices will be happy to figure out the cause, I can assure you. I cannot speak for King Ansem, but I believe he would be willing to help in our efforts on the matter of your nightmares as well."_

Now Sora and the others were going down hallway after hallway, floor after floor.

—" _Can I ask a question?" "Certainly, Miss Kairi." "Why does he," She pointed at the new apprentice, named Xehanort. The wires connected to her pulled slightly. "Have two Hearts?"—_

—" _You mean you can't remember_ anything _from the testing?_ _At all?" Isa asked. Beside him, Lea's brows had nearly climbed to his hairline. "No," Kairi said again. She wondered if she had done something wrong._ —

— _She sat up so fast she came close to smacking against Lea's outstretched hand. He had gone ashen. "Y-You were screaming in your sleep again," He explained, "Seriously, Kai, are you okay?"_ —

— _Kairi woke up slowly and realized she was asleep in some sort of cylindrical tube. Her head hurt horribly. Just outside the tube, in the room beyond, the apprentices worked._ —

Kairi was beginning to pull on her hair, just as Sora got on all fours and ducked her head in Kairi's vision. She disconnected entirely this time, if only for a short while. She could tell Sora was going to either have a panic attack or puke or both from the stress Kairi must have been unwittingly offloading through their connection, and she'd do more harm than good if she kept trying to watch to make sure Sora turned out okay.

She pulled at her hair, her shoes, the hems of her clothes. She wound the chain of her necklace around her thumb so tightly the tip began to glow bright red, then white as she unwound it, and then red again as she rewound. She pulled at her wristbands and snapped them against the skin of her wrists.

She could feel herself begin to cry, and this time Kairi couldn't stop.

* * *

 **SORA**

Sora swallowed hard against the bile in her throat. She hurriedly held out a hand to keep the little heartless from approaching her too closely. The Beast turned around with a raised brow when he noticed she had ceased to follow him.

"I-I'm fine," _Highwind runs on happy faces. Highwind runs on happy faces._ "Really, I'm okay. Just give me a minute."

Sora repeated the mantra to herself as she alternated between feeling too hot and too cold. It took a minute more before she stood back up and they resumed searching the citadel. Thankfully, this time she didn't see ghosts of whatever this place must have looked like before. Only torn tapestries and the skeletons of cobwebs, with broken windows here and there to aid the visual monotony.

Seriously, what was she seeing? Sora was certain these weren't her memories at all, but she had no idea of what else they could be.

She glanced at the angle the light sprawled out from the windows on. "Hey, Beast?"

He gave a grunt in response.

"The sun's supposed to be going down, right?" Another grunt, this time in affirmation. "I don't know how long you've been around, but me and the others I arrived with have been here for maybe over an hour now. The sun was at that angle when we arrived. Isn't it supposed to be lower by now?"

At that, The Beast stopped and angled over to see out the nearest window.

"You're right," He said finally. Sora wondered if he'd give some sort of an explanation, or remark, or anything. But all The Beast followed up with before he resumed walking was, "Be on your guard."

Well. He sure was a chatterbox.

Not for the first time that day, Sora began to miss Donald and Goofy. Their off and on chattering about everything, their stories of their time before King Mickey ascended the throne, Goofy's tales about making his way up the ranks of the guard. His talk about Maxie, too. And Queen Minnie, and Daisy. Everyone. She wondered if right now they were sharing any of the same stories with Riku, and if he was listening to them. If he was thinking of her as he did.

Was he thinking of her whenever he looked down at the keyblade in his hand now, too?

Sora would be lying if she said she didn't miss the keyblade. If she didn't miss the familiar tinkling noise of its keychain swinging back and forth, the reassuring weight of it in her grip. She missed the necklace, too. It felt even weirder to not have her necklace anymore, even compared to not having her keyblade anymore either. The latter, she'd had for only a month. Sure, only having her magic to defend herself with sucked, Sora wouldn't deny that for an instant. But not having the necklace? Well…

She dropped her head against her back to absentmindedly watch the ceiling as they walked, and her face pulled into a grimace as she thought about the necklace more. Ever since Sora had put it on that night, she had never taken it off. Not for anything at all until today.

Her free hand fluttered to her neck and found only skin, before drifting back down and flexing again and finding only open air. No keyblade. No necklace. No Riku.

More than once over the last few weeks Sora just let her overactive imagination wander, and idly daydreamed before about what might happen to the necklace if she just continued never taking it off for the rest of her life. If this whole journey around the worlds hadn't happened, and she and her friends were just three kids on the islands again. Maybe she'd die one day an old granny or something and archaeologists would dig her up like dinosaur bones and fossils a bajillion years later. Maybe they'd have her on display in a museum or something and come up with all sorts of long-winded theories as to what the pendant could have meant and put it all on a little plaque beside her display, and maybe she'd even be in one of those cool diorama exhibits where they put other animals and plants and things around you to try and recreate what sort of environment they thought you originally lived in. Maybe they'd sculpt a bust of her head based on what they thought she looked like and get the details all wrong except for the necklace. Or maybe they'd get all of it right.

Sora knew the thought was maybe a little bit morbid, but hey, it was just a daydream. It wasn't like it could ever come true, anymore, since the necklace was kind of gone. Now all those archeologists wouldn't get _any_ details right. Sigh.

As for the whole Riku thing, Sora couldn't pinpoint exactly what she felt about that. Well, that wasn't entirely true. Obviously she felt awful. She had made Kairi _cry?_ Sora wasn't sure what she did to cause that, but she hoped Kairi would forgive her if this worked out one way or another.

On top of feeling awful, Sora couldn't stifle the feeling of almost-mourning? If that was what it was called. Except Riku wasn't dead, he was still around here somewhere, but he didn't seem to like her anymore. All the time they'd spent together since they were tiny, all the inside- and not-so-inside-jokes, the trust, the house key and the spars and the happiness and the everything…finished. Just like that. With a single conversation.

She knew every piece of him, and he knew every piece of her. But for some reason they couldn't really share those pieces together anymore? It was so weird (and frankly, kind of dumb. But she had to respect the fact that he didn't seem to want anything more to do with her, even if the reasoning for that fact didn't really hold up super well in her perspective).

And on top of all of that, like the cherry on top of the worst sundae she'd ever had, was the loneliness. Sure, she had new friends now—Well, sort of? The little heartless was her friend, as much as a heartless could be, but it couldn't talk. And The Beast had never said anything about being friends—but she missed what she had. Even the keyblade felt like a friend for a while. Albeit a friend she wielded to kill creatures of the Darkness and unlock doors all over the place and lock the worlds' Keyholes, but a friend nonetheless.

Sora flexed her hand inconspicuously again. It still didn't work. She flopped her head forward so that it drooped down and she watched the floor under her feet.

It didn't take long before she noticed the little heartless still looking at her from time to time, before noticing her watching it and quickly looking away again. She wanted to ask why it kept looking at her, but Sora knew nothing would come of it. Heartless couldn't talk, and she got the feeling that nobody else would have an answer either.

The Beast stopped suddenly, and Sora came close to bumping into him before she glanced up to see what was going on. He turned his ears this way and that, pivoting them around to hear whatever it was he was focusing on. His strikingly human-like eyes darted to and fro.

"I can hear someone," The Beast announced. "Close by. We must hurry."

She sprinted to keep up with The Beast as he got on all fours and began to race towards the source of the noise, past broken frames with shredded paintings and with small clouds of dust from the carpets rising up underfoot.

Down another hall, up two flights of stairs, and Sora could begin to hear voices from down the hall they had entered. She glanced up at the unusually high ceiling, twice as tall as the rest, with more of those same motifs of thorned vines stretching along the top molding. At both ends, she could see cracked stained glass windows create blossoms of color on the floor, the walls. They formed the only specks of life in this place aside from her and her friends.

"In here," The beast gestured towards the vast door they were beginning to come up on. It was opened just slightly, and voices spilled out.

"—Told you to stop following me! How did you even—"

"—Said in the letter that we had to follow the key! We're just—"

"—Guys, come on—"

Sora would know those voices anywhere.

* * *

 **RIKU**

The first thing he did when he woke up was summon the keyblade.

It appeared readily, but this time it almost felt a little heavier in his hands. And, inexplicably, the necklace felt heavier too. Riku wasn't sure if it was just his imagination or if the keyblade and the necklace had changed somehow. Underneath his glove, his hand burned from where it gripped the handle of the keyblade. An unpleasant, prickling heat like when you held your hand over an open flame.

Had Sora ever experienced this? Or the man who bequeathed him this keyblade?

There was a small part of him that spoke up, then. A tiny piece of himself that Riku had tried to ignore for so long: _The voice was right. This key isn't meant for you anymore._

 _(That place spun from a destiny made of glass…It isn't meant for you anymore, either. Even though it was made for you.)_

"But…but why?" He whimpered. The keyblade did not respond. "You were supposed to be _mine,_ I—"

The door opened.

Of course it had to be that awful ear-rupturing duck again, Riku thought sourly as the two replacements barreled into the chapel. Of course.

"There he is!" The dog pointed out, gesturing to him. Riku steeled his grip as they ran closer.

"Are you okay?" The duck asked. "You look a little ruffled, did the heartless get you? I know you use the Darkness a lot, but I remember they were attracted to Sora when she wielded—"

Riku's mouth set in a hard line at hearing her name aloud. "I'm fine. Leave me alone."

"Are you sure ya don't need a potion at least?" The dog replied as he patted his numerous pockets before locating a potion and holding it out. "I know me and Donald are beginning to run a little low ourselves, we don't want you to get hurt. If ya want, we can run back to _Highwind_ real quick to grab some more for you to carry."

"I said I'm fine, I don't," Riku cut himself off as the entirety of what the dog said occurred to him. "Did you say, _'Highwind'_?"

"Yeah. That's the name of our gummi ship," The duck answered.

"Which one of you came up with that name? And how?"

The duck and the dog shared a hesitant glance.

"Well," The duck said as he scratched his temple, "Sora did. We just kinda called it the gummi ship before she came along, but she said it should have a name and suggested _Highwind._ Something about someone winning fair and square to decide the name of a boat or a raft?"

Riku hated how his Heart gave a pang at that. He quietly raised his free hand to clutch at his chest. At his Heart.

The raft. Their races. She had remembered them?

Wait, he had to keep in mind that Sora had ditched him and Kairi not too long after gaining the keyblade. Traverse Town, remember? Or even earlier than that. And she had replaced them with these two wastes of space, nonetheless.

Maybe Sora remembered them for a little while, but her time with the keyblade had to have gone to her head quickly thereafter.

(But the problem with that line of reasoning now was that it was almost beginning to feel hollow. For while Sora was lazy, and he absolutely knew how lazy she was better than anyone, she wasn't so lazy as to not bother changing the name of something if she didn't like it anymore.)

(And beyond simple laziness—Sora could be the biggest sentimental sap sometimes. Maybe, just maybe, this was one of those times?)

Riku could feel the keyblade begin to vibrate in his grip as the necklace felt a little heavier, and it brought him back to reality. He quickly clawed at the keyblade with both hands before it could try and disappear on him and leveled the two with a glare.

"You should go."

"But gawrsh, we just found you again," The dog objected, "We're supposed to stick together with ya."

"That's right," The duck reminded Riku. "One for all and—"

"All for one, I got it the first time," He seethed. Riku stood quickly and walked back towards the stretch of wall that he knew concealed the entrance to the chamber where Kairi was left. He turned when he heard two sets of footsteps follow him over. Riku clenched his fists.

"For the last time, I told you to stop following me! How did you even find me here in the first place?!"

"We ran all over trying to find you!" The duck squawked, "We're supposed to stick by you, our king said in the letter that we had to follow the key! We're just trying to do what we're told!"

The dog already knew he and the duck were brewing for another confrontation, for he then spoke up, "Guys, come on—"

The door opened again.

The conversation-turned-argument halted when a large shambling beast entered the room, soon followed by Sora. Riku watched her like a hawk to the point that he nearly missed the black bundle shuffling in quietly after her feet, and he realized the little heartless had been accompanying her this whole time she'd been running around.

His shoulders fell. How was Sora yet again able to find new friends? Here? In Hollow Bastion?

She was supposed to be busy suffering through loneliness like he had to. She was supposed to be learning the consequences of running around with a keyblade that wasn't hers, and ditching her real friends for some replacements that, even after being ditched by _them_ , she'd managed to find replacements _for the replacements_ only minutes later!

The words fell out of his mouth before he could think about it. "Are you freaking kidding me? Again?"

"What?" She asked with a slight edge to her voice.

There was no way Sora wasn't aware of what she was doing. She could be a little slow on the uptake sometimes, but this? This was blatant.

Riku decided to ditch the wall for now. He didn't feel good about it, but Kairi would have to wait until Sora and the rest of those idiots were gone. He needed to get away from them.

He pushed past Sora and pretended she wasn't there, while shooting the little heartless the most venomous expression he could muster. Riku was inwardly pleased when the little heartless seemed to wilt slightly. And, with disregard towards the duck and the dog's inquiries as to where he was going, Riku left.

The second he made it out into the hallway, before anyone could try and follow him around yet again, Riku decided to open a Dark portal to one of the few places of the castle he knew they wouldn't find any time soon. The dungeons.

He'd visited the place only a couple of times before, first out of mild interest and again out of boredom on one of the rare days neither training nor the library could pique his interest. But he'd mostly avoided the dungeons because there was water everywhere underfoot and it made the place smell like mold. More often than not there were a few heartless wandering around there, but Riku still had the keyblade if they tried anything. But then he began to regret the decision to come down there the second he stepped out of the portal, even when he was so desperate to be alone.

Because there were heartless everywhere.

They were scuttling along the walls, the floor, the ceiling. They were crawling all over each other, all shapes and sizes, including the larger ones he'd seen only once or twice, and larger ones still Riku had never seen before at all. And slowly, surely, every last one of them turned their glowing yellow eyes on him and stared.

What was it the duck had said? That the heartless were attracted to the keyblade?

Were they going to attack him?

For one terrifying second, Riku could see one readying to leap out of the corner of his eye, its antennae twitching madly, gnarled feet already grinding into the heartless' peers it was standing on for a foothold. And its legs readied to jump.

" _Cease."_

His world went still. Literally, and figuratively.

The heartless froze in their preparations to attack, though they were much slower to turn from him than Riku would have liked. Finally they began to move away like a great Dark tide.

And there he was, the source of that unique voice that was half thought and half sound—the man who had given Riku everything.

It took Riku a moment to regain himself. "I-It's _you,_ " He breathed. "You came back for me."

The man in the hood hadn't changed a bit. As if he were lifted straight out of his memories from that final night on the islands and plopped right down in front of him. With the same brown robes, the same crossed belts on his torso, the same shapeless limbs and huddled form.

" _I did."_

Riku drew closer, and he could see the man doing the same. "I never got to thank you before," He began, "For letting me be free. For giving me power and teaching me about the Dark. You were right, it's everything you said it was and more—it's incredible."

" _I'm glad to hear it. I understand you've been exploring the potential of Darkness; I've heard of your forays with the heartless around the world. You've managed to make quite a name for yourself. Not to mention you've recovered your key,"_ He gestured to the keyblade in Riku's hold.

At the mention of the heartless and the keyblade, Riku's smile died.

"Right," He looked at the keyblade again, and felt his hand continue to burn. Riku wasn't sure, but he thought it might have gotten a little bit worse since waking up from that dream. Beneath his collar, the necklace felt heavier yet. "I wanted to ask you some things about that. The keyblade, anyway."

" _Tell me."_

Riku decided to start from the beginning. About his early efforts for a keyblade culminating in Soul Eater, how the keyblade he had wanted so dearly had ended up with Sora instead. Even with the Mark of the Bequeathed on his Heart that Maleficent informed him of (which he knew had to be from the meeting with the man on the shore, but he didn't dare try to bring that up with the hooded man, lest his own superstitions about the magic running out came true and he would lose the keyblade for good.) How he had successfully taken it back just over an hour ago, culminating with the false Awakening, the Voice's words on the matter.

"It said that I had 'grown crooked', and something about how my efforts to pursue the keyblade came at a great cost to me and everybody around me was the cause of that? I don't understand. Everything I've done was for the people around me, with Kairi and," He looked down at the keyblade again. "Holding the keyblade now is beginning to hurt. As if it doesn't want me anymore. But isn't it supposed to be mine? Or is there something else going on?"

For a long time, the man in the hood was quiet. Riku alternated between flexing his grip on the keyblade and relaxing it slightly in attempts to quell the increasingly uncomfortable burning sensation, and completely forgot about the increased weight of the necklace as well in the face of the pain. The heartless had gone utterly still and were now watching them both silently. The only noises that he could hear were the far-off dripping of water and the jingling of the keychain.

And finally, the man hummed.

" _The keyblade that you bear now has a history of being…unpredictable. It does not help your circumstances that that particular keyblade has a twin."_

"A twin?"

He gave a solemn nod at Riku's disbelief. _"Keyblades that come in pairs tend to exhibit unique properties. It can be a wide range of qualities—From two blades being able to act as one across realms, to working together to produce results any singular keyblade would be incapable of, to something as simple as merely being stronger when used together. And more, so much more. In the case of this keyblade and its sibling the two display a capacity for judgement, which can open their wielders to the risk of their disagreement."_

"Wait, 'judgement'? 'Disagreement'?" Riku echoed. He could feel anxiousness beginning to gnaw at him. "So the Voice was right, and I really have been doing everything wrong?"

" _Perhaps,"_ He began, and the anxiousness ebbed into dread. _"Or perhaps you simply need to convince it that it was wrong about you. Prove yourself worthy and demonstrate that its judgement was hasty, and that keyblade will return to you as your faithful tool."_

That made sense. People could be wrong in their judgement all the time, just look at Sora. Why couldn't keyblades be wrong, too?

At that thought, the burning in his hand began to approach scalding temperatures. Riku winced.

"How can I prove the keyblade wrong? Preferably sooner rather than later, please, if you don't mind."

The man in the hood chuckled. _"Impatient, aren't you?"_

"No, no," He protested weakly amidst the pain, "It's just—holding this thing is beginning to hurt."

" _Intriguing,"_ The man mused. _"Well. When we met, I told you that Darkness and Light could not survive without each other, but that they were also synonymous with Weakness and Strength. I told you that it was Light that would fail you when you need it most."_

"Yeah, but I've been trying to help the Dark all this time. I don't understand what this issue has to do with Light."

" _The keyblade you hold in your hand belongs to the Realm of Light, the realm in which this world and all others you've seen so far occupy. In fact, it is_ the _key to the Realm of Light."_

"Wait, you're serious?" Riku's hand burned again, and this time he regarded the keyblade with a measure of disgust and disillusionment. No wonder this thing chose Sora instead. " _Light?_ And this realm is based on it?"

The man gave another nod. _"With that in mind, it is logical that this keyblade would try and shun you when you need it most."_

 _Yeah,_ Riku thought, _it makes a little too much sense._ But he refused to let go of it yet; Better he had it than Sora.

" _But worry not. I did say that Darkness and Light could not survive without each other, didn't I? The Realm of Light cannot survive without the Dark. It stands to reason that the key to this realm would not be able to survive without the Dark as well."_

His eyes widened. "Do you mean—?"

" _I do. I notice even now that there are still pieces of you that have resisted the call of the Dark,"_ The man in the hood stepped closer, and this time Riku took a half-step back as he clutched at his Heart again. That instinct that was deeper than bone, that had protested in the beginning and protested again when faced with the Heart of Wonderland—but had since gone quiet for so long now—whispered desperately _He does not want what's best for you._

But that was absurd. Why wouldn't he want what was best for him? The man in the hood was right about the Light and Dark, and he was the one who gave Riku freedom.

 _And he can take it away,_ it whispered again. _Think about what happened with Maleficent._

The man in the hood took one more step closer, and the keyblade felt white-hot in his hands then. Riku nearly dropped it as he curled in on himself in pain.

" _You see? The keyblade knows that for all your efforts, there are still pieces of your Heart that have shielded themselves away. You hesitate and it brings you nothing but pain."_

"I—I don't," Riku cried out as he could feel the burning begin to shoot up his arm. "I don't know!"

" _I came back for you just like I promised I would all those years ago,"_ The man in the hood then said. _"And I taught you how to reach the outside world, just as I promised I would. Now let me show you how to fight, this time for your rightful keyblade."_

For a moment, Riku's shock was so strong it distracted him from the pain. "That was _you?_ On the play island when I was little?"

" _But of course."_

It made too much sense. Riku had wondered from time to time as to why it felt as though he had met the man in the hood before in their very first meeting. And as it now turned out, he had met him before; The man in the hood was the same man who had him take the oath on his own keyblade all those years ago.

" _I told you then that one day I would show you how to become strong. With Darkness,"_ The man in the hood went on, _"Strength will always be at your beck and call._ Freedom _will always be at your beck and call. Open every cloistered corner of yourself to the Dark, and you can do anything. You can go anywhere. And whoever opposes you will be at your mercy."_

The pain had sprung upwards towards his shoulder now, and Riku could barely feel his hand anymore. Everything was beginning to become lost in the agony. Yet still he held onto the keyblade for dear life.

The man in the hood extended an arm, and Riku's vision swam with pain. But even then he could just barely see small trails of Dark smoke seep from the drooping cuff of the man's sleeve.

" _What do you choose, Riku? Light, or Darkness? Weakness, or strength?"_

The man took one last step closer.

" _Chains? Or glory?"_

He wanted power, strength, destiny. He wanted friends that wouldn't replace him, and people that cared about him as much as he did about them. No matter what the cost, Voice be damned.

He wanted _his_ keyblade back. He wanted for the pain to stop. He wanted to defeat Maleficent.

But most of all, Riku wanted to be the hero.

"I choose glory."

* * *

 **KAIRI**

Wind. Unwind. Wind. Unwind. Wind. Her fingertip alternated between being as red as a glowing coal and as white as a sheet.

" _I can't keep defending you!" Apprentice Even's outburst was entirely unprecedented, though not unexpected. He gestured uselessly towards the rest of the research suite, still messy from the day's work. "I can't keep defending, defending…this!_ All _of it!"_

 _The noise had woken Kairi up in her observation tank, and she slowly opened her eyes and squinted to see apprentices Even and Xehanort, the apprentice that had been introduced to her that day (Apprentice Even had mentioned that she'd met him before, but Kairi couldn't recall ever meeting him previously aside from hushed whispers amongst the castle's workers discussing his being discovered and rumors of the more dubious research he was beginning to partake in). The two researchers were the only ones remaining after all the others had turned in for the night._

" _Be reasonable, I only need a short while longer to figure out how to unlock the memories of the subject downstairs and the rest of my own," Apprentice Xehanort halfway held up a hand in placation, and the other was holding down a stack of papers. Apprentice Even must not have liked what he saw in them. "What's that phrase she mutters? 'May my Heart be my guiding key'? The Heart, Even. Master Ansem is too fearful to traverse the depths of the human Heart. But we are men of science! Figuring out mysteries like this is what we do!"_

" _He's afraid for good reason," Apprentice Even replied. "What you're having us do is going far beyond science into the realm of something draconic. You have ignored ethics entirely. Master Ansem has ordered you to stop, Miss Kairi's family is growing increasingly concerned—I've caught her brother and his friend trying to snoop around twice this week!"_

" _Keep throwing them out!"_

" _I can't! Not forever! Eventually one of the guards will slip up or they'll find an infrequently covered route or some other solution and those two will see everything! What would you have us do then?"_

 _Apprentice Xehanort's forehead creased in thought. "…We'll make them into test subjects as well, then."_

 _He gaped._

" _You're serious, aren't you. Absolutely serious."_

" _I am."_

" _And absolutely insane! I've heard enough, Xehanort," Apprentice Even strode towards the entrance to the research suite. "I'm going to Master Ansem about this. I should've reported your barbarous 'research' from the start."_

" _You wouldn't!"_

" _I would. I will, in fact, right now." Apprentice Even reached for the door handle, and Apprentice Xehanort raced towards the computer interface on the nearby wall and input several keystrokes at a lightning (and clearly well-practiced) pace. An automated voice announced the emergency lockdown just as Apprentice Even attempted to turn the door handle, and instantly found he couldn't. A siren began to ring out over the loudspeakers as Apprentice Even turned to Apprentice Xehanort with his already overlarge eyes nearly bulging out of his head._

 _Another few keystrokes, and the siren had been muted. But the yield lights still went on and the two were now framed in a revolving yellow gleam._

" _No," Apprentice Xehanort announced. "You won't."_

"… _You stole Master Ansem's credentials? What else did you take?"_

" _Only what I needed. And I'll continue to take whatever I need to get to the bottom of what I am. Of what the subjects are," With the same speed, he made his way over to grab Apprentice Even roughly and wrangled his arms around his back. And then, he began to shove him towards the other door on the opposite side of the room._

" _What—What on earth are you doing?! Let me go this instant!" Apprentice Even cried as he kicked his legs, his arms thrashing in the inhumanly strong grip as he got closer towards the door. "Let go of me!"_

 _But Apprentice Xehanort did nothing of the sort. As the two passed by Kairi's observation tank he noticed her blearily watching them, and readjusted his hold past Apprentice Even's furious struggling and continued shouting on the matter. With one arm now free, he reached to type in something on the screen on the side of the tank, and continued on his journey towards the door as lilac-colored gas began to fill the tank once again. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head as a headache began, and Kairi passed out._

Wind. Unwind. Wind. Unwind.

"Take, huh?" Kairi remarked aloud in the white room. The boy continued to sleep. And she continued to watch her fingertip turn red and white. "I guess he took a lot, considering the state this place is in now."

Unwind. Wind.

And then she couldn't wind her necklace around her finger anymore. Kairi, without her choosing to, had found herself back in the grand hall where the Princesses of Heart lay.

Which could only mean that Sora had found herself close enough by for her Heart to return partway to herself. Dread tiptoed down Kairi's spine, and suddenly she resented that she could feel anything at all. That Sora had managed to navigate this place well enough for it to happen.

But before she could think on the matter anymore, Kairi could hear the old noise of a Dark portal opening from somewhere in the room just out of her sight.

"Who's there?" Maleficent demanded, and Kairi could hear her footsteps hurriedly making their way down some sort of a staircase elsewhere in the room. And then, strange laughter.

"Is that any way to greet an old friend?"

That sounded an awful lot like Riku. But at the same time it didn't sound like Riku at all.

"Riku?" Maleficent gasped, and Kairi could hear her come closer. "How in heavens' name did you—Ah. I see now."

There was another peal of laughter, and it sounded as though it were coming from two people. Like Riku was sharing his windpipe with someone else. Her dread increased twofold.

"The boy chose glory. From what he's told me in here," At this, someone walked up past Kairi's sight from farther down into the hall, and she looked to see Riku making his way towards Maleficent while pointing at his temple. His eyes glanced down at her as he walked, and Riku's—no, Not-Riku's, Riku didn't have _three_ Hearts—wolfish grin widened considerably. It was an expression she had never seen him make before. "His first request was to defeat you using any means necessary."

From somewhere close by, Kairi could hear a raven call. It didn't sound happy.

"I can't say I didn't expect that. Perhaps not this scenario," Maleficent replied, "But the boy clearly wanted to take my place. Almost every ally I've recruited so far has wanted the same; Jafar, Ursula, Oogie Boogie…Hah! Imagine all the worlds being ruled by a sentient sack of insects. I certainly cannot. Only Hades lacked the desire, though I'm fairly certain that is only because he has his own already. What is a fairy to a god?"

"And what is the crownless to a kingdom? A Kingdom Hearts, no less?" Not-Riku answered. He paused for a moment. "The boy says he never wanted your place."

"I've told him not to lie to me countless times. His thoughts of taking my power were nigh-incessant, past the desperate wailing for that girl with the key. Which I can't help but notice is absent from your hand."

Not-Riku shrugged as he summoned it back to his hand momentarily. The keyblade came to him with a gleam of Light, but only after a moment's hesitation after he gestured for it. "It disagrees with me."

Now it was Maleficent's turn to laugh. "What were your words? 'Any fool can hold a keyblade, but keeping it takes everything'? When I called the boy a fool, I hadn't realized it would turn out to be prophecy as well. You should be a little more discerning with your vessels, Ansem."

Ansem?

"I certainly am," Ansem's expression was skirting on boredom. "All I needed from the boy was his Heart's Mark and his body, and he has given both up for my use willingly." Oh, no. No, no, no, _no. Riku,_ Kairi thought desperately, _you absolute idiot._ She called him a hundred names in her head as Ansem went on, "The Kingdom Key can be dealt with later. For now I think I shall forge a tool of my own."

He outstretched his hand, and the Kingdom Key disappeared.

It had continued to be empty for several seconds, until Kairi began to see it—several gleaming Hearts of pure Light coming from the Princesses of Heart towards Ansem's hand, just as the shadows in all corners of the room began to writhe and blink with glowing yellow eyes. Heartless.

"Quiet, boy," He murmured sharply. "The ends justify the means. You know this."

Ansem gathered the Hearts in his hand as he directed the heartless with the other, and the heartless rose up to greet him as he did. And as one hand flashed with Light, the other began to dim with the Dark.

The Darkness in his hand—formed from the heartless, reduced from beings into their most fundamental components, the Hearts trapped within them now crumpled to dust as he did so—stretched out into a great spiraling curve up his arm, stretching and morphing to mimic the dips and curves of muscles like a corrupted imitation of an anatomy chart. The tendrils continued to stretch past his shoulder, across his back, and meandered outward from there in directions that risked going out of sight from Kairi's meagre view.

The Dark tendrils skimmed down over his shirt, his jeans, any part of himself they could reach to continue forming that second skin. From what little she could see they had also formed a belt, and a white overskirt trimmed with indigo. And then, slowly, the tendrils began inching towards the hand that held the Light.

The Light began to extend into a great shimmering silhouette that hovered just outside of Ansem's hold, with a curved hilt that just barely began to form barbs at certain points, like the memories of thorns. At that the Light beamed out, out, until it formed a blade nearly as long as Kairi was tall. The rest of the design was remarkably simplistic; A pointed tip that sprung outwards as the teeth that were so fundamental to the shape of any keyblade started to form, with one tendril sweeping in on itself to create the outside of a brutal Heart, and another tooth not making much more than a small point. And then, the keyblade's formation stopped short.

It was incomplete, Kairi realized. There was no keychain at the other end like the Kingdom Key did.

And clearly Maleficent had noticed the same, for she said, "Just like our collection of Princesses of Heart, your keyblade is incomplete. Will you still be able to fight without a finished weapon?"

"Of course I can," Ansem assured with confidence as the keyblade settled into his grasp. The former white-and-blue color scheme was overtaken by a Darker cast as the hilt turned red and the blade went black. The process reminded Kairi quite a bit of watching watercolors mix in a cup, all the hues exploding out with a single drop before settling into something dull. "We know exactly where the girl's Heart is, but _you're_ here and ready. It would be impolite to keep you waiting, wouldn't it?"

Maleficent did not answer the question, but instead said, "I did not know one could forge keyblades. I thought all the keyblades that would ever be have already been made."

Ansem tested out the keyblade with a couple of lazy outward swipes. It cut through the air with a hollow _swoop!_

He replied, "In most cases, you are correct. But I will remind you that once not too long ago you told the boy that you were a fairy quite unlike most others, just as he was a boy quite unlike most others. It is the same with me—a master quite unlike most other masters."

"Oh?"

A nod. "It helps that you unwittingly taught the boy the framework to the Power of Beckoning. With that, it is simple enough for me to call forth the shape of an instrument of war even from the gentlest of Hearts. But we have talked for long enough, haven't we?"

Ansem stopped testing out the keyblade and fixed his eyes on Maleficent.

"The boy asked for glory, Maleficent, and glory I shall give. You've been at this for a decade, haven't you? A little more? That's quite a while," He began.

Ansem pointed the keyblade in challenge, and its wicked tip seemed to sparkle Darkly in the blue light of the flames.

"I think it's time for a changing of the guard, don't you agree?"

* * *

 **SORA**

After Riku stormed out—without even looking at her? That was just plain rude. Even for Riku.—the ensuing silence was downright awkward.

"So-o-o," Sora trailed inelegantly, and cast an exaggerated glance around at the assorted group as Goofy returned from checking outside in the hall as to where Riku could have gone with a sad shake of his head. Riku was already gone.

A tiny part of her felt sad, still, but most of her just wanted to roll her eyes so hard at the whole series of events that they'd probably fall out of her head. Riku was being ridiculous.

"Nice to see you guys again," She finished lamely. Donald crossed his arms.

"What are you doing running around in this place with only that to fight with? You were supposed to stay behind with the gummi ship."

"Wow, Donald," Sora drawled. The little heartless took a cautious step towards him ready to shake hands and Donald held up his staff just slightly. It lowered its hand. "Awesome to see you too. As for what I've been doing, I've been trying to save my friends. What else?"

"What else? Getting hurt is what else!" Donald replied. "The heartless are worse here than they were on that pirate ship. You don't even have a keyblade."

"I couldn't help but notice," She answered with another unhappy glance down at her toy sword. On one hand, it was actually kind of nice to have one of the last things her father had given her back, on top of the fact that it was the only thing Sora had from Destiny Islands other than the clothes on her back. But in terms of practicality, it didn't exactly function as well as a keyblade.

"And _what_ is this thing doing here?!" He went on angrily as he pointed a feathered hand at the little heartless, who answered his gesture with a curious lift to its antennae. It made to sniff at his finger and he snapped it away. Could heartless smell stuff? Sora filed away the thought to ponder on later. "Why isn't it attacking us?"

"'Cause it's my friend!"

"No it's not! It's a heartless!"

"Yeah, well it's also my friend, don't go attacking it!"

"Considerin' the time of day, I'd say we should be thankful it's not goin' after us, ahyuck!" Goofy finally spoke up, in a notably better mood now that he and Donald saw that Sora had made it through okay. He always did tend to be their mediator in disagreements.

"See?" Sora grinned. Even Goofy could sense something different about the heartless, beyond its behavior. Something about the little heartless _felt_ warm. Familiar. "Two against three, Donald. Leave it alone."

He replied with a long squint at the little heartless, and it only shuffled towards him in turn with a clumsy toddling approximation of a walk with its hand raised again. Donald still didn't shake its hand. "Fine. I guess. But what'll we do with Riku gone, Goofy? We were supposed to follow the key."

"Well, um. Gawrsh," He answered. "I suppose we try waitin'? I don't think I got enough potions left on me for us to fight our way through the heartless again. I have a feeling he was interested in that wall he was takin' a nap in front of."

"What do you mean?" Sora asked as she walked over to the section of wall he was referring to and tested it with a knock. It didn't sound hollow, and it didn't do anything. Was this a secret door or something like in cartoons? If she leaned on it hard enough, would it suddenly flip and start to revolve onto a secret passageway or something?

One nudge. Two. A tentative third attempt. It didn't work. She abandoned that line of thought.

"This is becoming pointless," The Beast decided as he made to leave the chapel. "I must continue my search for Belle. I thank you for your help in staving off the heartless, Sora, but I believe our time has come to an end. Goodbye."

"Hey, Beast, wait!" Sora called after him. The Beast slowed slightly with one ear raised in acknowledgement, his expression otherwise unchanged. "You can't seriously be thinking of going back out there alone. They'd nearly gotten you earlier before I came in."

"Sora's right," Goofy agreed. "We can't make our way through this place alone. We gotta stick together."

"Yeah. And who is Belle, anyway? You mentioned she was taken from you, and you ended up here?"

"Belle is everything to me," The Beast's voice came out in a rumble like distant thunder. "Our meeting was…not optimal. That much is certain. But even then I knew she was braver than any who dared to look upon me before. Belle was curious, and though her bravery combined with her curiosity made her for a brazen companion at times, I would not have it any other way. She is the first to see me for something more than what I am, and I want to live up to what she sees in me."

He went on, "Such brazenness is what led to our parting from each other and our home, and I am sorry to say I played a part in it. After a tumultuous dinner, in which one of my servants had gone against my orders and allowed her to explore my residence—and thus satiate her ineffable curiosity about my past—it had turned out Belle discovered a portrait of myself from a time when I was more…comely. I thought I had already torn it up beyond recognition, for I resented the reminder of how things could have been. She found the rose that symbolized my plight at that same time, and Belle, with all of her stunning intellect, was able to piece things together well enough to have at least an idea of what happened. For a moment, I hated her for that."

"Why?" Sora asked.

"Because I hated myself. I couldn't stand the thought of someone else realizing how weak I had been to fall for the Darkest parts of me, and I couldn't stand the thought of someone else hating me the same way I did. So in the moment I told her the only thing I could think of. I told her to get out."

The Beast continued, "I was not open to the empathy of others at that time. I thought it was the same as pity, and I couldn't stand that. I made my mistakes, and I deserved what happened to me. But Belle deserved better than my momentary anger, and so I searched for her to apologize. As it had turned out, she was frightened enough by the scope of my anger to run into the night. And that's when a witch stole her away."

Maleficent. It had to be.

"…Did this 'witch' happen to have green skin? Horns?" Sora inquired, already sure of the answer. Beside her, Donald and Goofy seemed as though they were thinking the same thing.

"She did," The Beast answered with a measure of surprise. "Have you encountered her before?"

"We sure have," Goofy replied. "In fact, we made our way here to stop her. She's been doin' this sort of thing all 'round the other worlds too."

"Others like Belle have been going missing all over the place," Sora added, "We came here to fix it, and to get my friends back."

Of course, it hadn't exactly gone to plan so far. But she had to keep going, right?

The Beast turned at that with a contemplative sound, and said, "Then maybe—"

A vast muffled crash resounded before he could finish, from somewhere behind the wall Goofy mentioned. And then another. This time the crash ended not with quietude, but with a sustained noise quite like a train coming closer and closer, before capping off with a _CRACK!_

They all jumped at the sound, especially Goofy, who then said as he raised an ear, "I think I can hear someone laughing?"

"Can you hear anything else?" Donald wondered. "I think some serious magic is being cast, the air feels funny."

Now that Sora was paying attention, she realized Donald was right: It felt as though there was a pressure in the air that made her ears start to pop. Sora could feel goosebumps form on her arms.

"What's happening?"

"I don't know," Donald replied, matching her hushed tone. Sora couldn't explain it, but she felt the need to remain quiet and hope that whatever was causing the change in the air to not notice any of them. She fought urge to huddle into a crouch on the floor, and Sora could see the little heartless starting to do just that. It lowered itself onto its knees and tucked its antennae in closely. And then the little heartless' bright yellow eyes flickered shut.

"Someone screamed," Goofy whimpered. Sora saw he was beginning to shiver.

"Should we help them?"

"Hold on," He said, and tentatively lifted an ear again. "Nevermind, I think I was confusin' the sound of a hiss."

At that, he nearly dropped his shield as he scrambled backwards. Sora turned to see even The Beast cautiously stepping away.

"Get away from that wall," He growled. "Now!"

They did, and Sora had to nearly grab the little heartless to make it move in time. It flinched violently at her touch, and curled in on itself even more. Donald nearly flew over to where Goofy was, and the second she, The Beast, and the little heartless were close enough he spit out a shielding spell. A translucent barrier formed in front of the group, and their view of the far wall was now marred with a hexagonal pattern.

"Geez, Donald, why don't you ever bother casting this in the middle of a fight?" Sora mumbled.

He gave her a dirty look. "I do. Usually you're all either too far away for it to help you, or I have too little ethers to justify the cost to stretch it out like this—"

 _Thump, thump, thump, CRACK!_

The far wall had dissolved to nothing, revealing itself to be only an illusion, but the surrounding structure had broken wide open as a dragon as black as the night and every inch as vast crashed through. It burst forth with such vigor that Donald's shield was beginning to crack from the rain of stones, and the dragon barely regarded them with its acidic glower that smeared great trails of green across their vision as its head turned towards the towering stained-glass windows. It opened its maw wide to let loose a hideous screech, and all the group held their hands to their ears as every window in the room broke from the racket.

The tinkling of the glass raining down around them sounded close to real rain, made of drops of water instead of a whole spectrum of color like now—

 _(Gold sunlight splintered into red and green and blue and a whole rainbow made of shattered glass that glimmered amid the vacuum)_

Sora screwed her face tightly against the onslaught of another memory. The dragon swung its head in an arc and destroyed the stony settings of the windows next, and with it she spied the dragon's horns leaving great splits in the remaining walls.

And finally, leaving naught but ruin in its wake, the dragon leapt out into the sunset.

With the barrier spell dismissed and the crunch of glass marking her steps, Sora raced towards the precipice and freely gaped at the sight of the dragon now flying towards the abandoned neighborhoods of Hollow Bastion away from the citadel. She could hear what must have been the rest of her companions coming to join in. The next noise was a shuffling walk as The Beast moved towards the new passageway the dragon had barged in from. He must have decided to investigate.

Meanwhile, all she could bring herself to say was, "Was that…a dragon?"

Donald gave a slow, stupefied nod. "That was a dragon."

The reality of what she had just seen slowly started to set in. "That was a _dragon,_ " She repeated, awestruck. And more than a little starstruck as well.

Her tone appeared to finally pull Donald out of his daze, and he frowned at her. " _That_ was a _dragon!_ "

Oh, right. Crap. They were going to have to fight that thing, weren't they?

"That…was a dragon," Sora said once more with dawning recognition.

"That was a dragon," Goofy gave a nervous swallow.

She looked at the glass still littered around her shoes and then at the wreckage still nearly trying to crumble out the open wall. At the long cleaves in the stone just from the dragon's horns, that had to be as tall as Sora was, or even as tall as Goofy. And that was just its horns.

From far off, they heard another screeching roar.

"…That was a dragon," Sora concluded.

And then, from somewhere not so far off, the group heard the now-familiar scrape of claws against stone.

It was the little heartless. It had slid down to the ground and was now crouched in on itself in the fetal position, shaking and holding its head. Sora ran over.

"Hey, what's wrong, little guy?"

She stopped short when the little heartless flung out an arm to gesture for her to stay back, with the other arm busy gripping tightly at its head. The way the little heartless was now posed, crouched over with one hand to its head and one hand keeping her away, reminded Sora strikingly of how she had nearly collapsed earlier with the visions of how this place was before its fall. In fact, the little heartless must have been emulating that now. But why?

"I think your friend's broken," Donald huffed.

"It's not broken! I think it might be in pain or something," Sora insisted, before looking back and seeing the little heartless' dangerous new light in its stare as it slowly stood upright and let go of its head. She flinched as it took a step forward, shaky at first, as if it were fighting against itself. Another step, and she started to tiptoe away.

And then the little heartless began to give chase. It lunged.

Goofy had barely intercepted it in time with his shield, and the little heartless' claws threw off sparks as it tried to scratch the metal and reach around. Both him and Sora had to continuously reangle themselves behind the shield so that it couldn't succeed. It began to viciously push against the shield with surprising strength, and Goofy stumbled.

And that was his mistake. With a quick shout of "Wo-o-ah!" Goofy fell backward, and the weight of the shield pushed Sora down too. They both moved desperately to get behind the shield again to no avail. The little heartless had managed to leave a long, deep gash on her forearm that immediately glistened red and matched it with another to her leg, and Sora felt an unexpected rush of panic as she first tried to duck back under the shield, and then attempted to crawl backwards to the other wall with her toy sword brandished against the little heartless' pursuit, which felt laughably ineffective against the onslaught as its arms and legs jerked violently.

"Stop it!" Sora insisted. It gave no indication of even hearing her, and she said again, more loudly, " _Stop_ it! What's gotten into you?"

The little heartless recoiled as a lightning bolt struck it, and Sora whipped around towards Donald, who had his staff already crackling around the corners.

"Don't hurt it! It's my friend!"

"Not anymore," Donald corrected her. He pointed outside. "It's a heartless. See the sun?"

He was right. The sun, that had remained suspended in the sky at its unnervingly constant position at least since they had arrived, was now noticeably lower than it was even ten minutes ago.

Night was finally closing in on Hollow Bastion.

No wonder the little heartless had finally gone mad. It bitterly swiped at her wooden toy sword, leaving long white trails of where its claws had dug. The sight of them on the remnant of her childhood, the toy sword that was the epicenter of so many memories and now a bitter desertion, too, was what brought Sora to her senses.

The little heartless was her friend once. No longer.

Now it was just another heartless.

Sora shivered as she reared back the toy sword, and not for the first time that day she could feel the beginnings of tears sting around the corners of her eyes. She focused in on the parts of the heartless that had already been damaged by Donald's magic, that seeped Dark smoke that matched the corners of the broken chapel, and closed her eyes as she struck.

It almost sickened her when she could feel the wooden sword scrape against the heartless' skin. When more Dark smoke matched that first trail. Trying to fight the heartless the old-fashioned way was going too slow for Sora to bear—not out of impatience, though Sora was not devoid of that quality. This time it was too slow to bear because it felt inhumane.

She swung again, and this time the little heartless grabbed her sword, stopping it in its tracks. It reached towards the base of the blade with one hand and used the other to grab onto a weak spot closer to the end.

 _Crack!_

In one quick motion the little heartless had broken her wooden toy sword, and she inhaled sharply when she saw the end of it hanging on by naught more than several long reams of fiber.

"I can't," Sora stuttered as she tried to gain distance from the little heartless, unsure of what to do. "I can't. I can't keep doing this."

"Here," Donald said as he raised his staff again, and more lightning crackled around the edges far fiercer than she'd ever seen. His expression, however, was almost dutiful. "Can you do magic?"

She nodded.

"Then try raising your sword and casting something, too. We'll stop it together, okay?"

Sora raised her sword and called to mind the strongest fire spell she could. But this time, rather than seeing images of wildfires and infernos in her imagination, she thought of the height of summer back on Destiny Islands. The sand and pavement that nipped at your soles with their heat as you raced towards the ocean. How the air shimmered as the roads reflected the strength of the sun pouring down. The burning of a thousand lanterns during the season's festivals.

"Go!"

Fire and lightning intertwined as their magic darted towards the heartless, and Sora turned away before she saw it consumed.

"It's done," Donald announced. Sora turned back to see only the smallest traces of Dark smoke left behind of the little heartless, before even that dissipated too.

"There's no Heart coming out of it now, either," She noted.

"Yeah," He replied. "There must be something funny about this place or something, not long after we arrived and Riku got the keyblade," Her Heart hurt at the reminder, "Me and Goofy noticed our weapons weren't letting the Hearts out anymore either."

"What does that mean?" Sora wondered. She thought back to Traverse Town, and watching that man get turned into a heartless. How the Hearts had sailed away when she'd had the keyblade. "Did someone's Heart just get destroyed? Or did the heartless here somehow not have Hearts held in them in the first place?"

"We can't think about that now," Donald said. "We have to remember what we came here for. Maleficent, remember? And we have to take care of that dragon now, too."

"And you wanted to get your friend Kairi back safe," Goofy joined in.

"And those girls that Maleficent kidnapped must be somewhere around here," Donald added as he cast a quick cure spell on Sora, and her wounds sewed themselves shut. She gave a small smile at that.

"Thanks, Donald. I think that might be the only time you've ever cast a healing spell on me."

"Don't push it."

"That's quite the agenda," Someone, or maybe it was two people, spoke from behind. "Are you sure you can get even one of those things accomplished without the keyblade?"

"Riku?" Sora guessed as she turned. The voice sounded somewhat familiar, but she wasn't sure.

And there he was. Halfway reclined against the rubble of the formerly hidden entrance with his arms crossed and no keyblade in hand. Riku was wearing some sort of an outfit she hadn't seen before, like a Dark carapace that imitated the ridges and bends of sinew. Around his neck, the crown necklace sparkled, a clear departure from the altered heartless emblem on his chest that now lacked the crossing of thorned vine motifs that the ordinary heartless symbol had.

"Why are you talking like that?"

He declined to answer the question and gazed out towards the setting sun. "She was a worthy opponent, I will say. I haven't had a test of magic like that in quite some time. But Maleficent, for all her cunning, failed to recognize that she was just another puppet after all."

Sora knew Riku's face like the back of her hand. She knew every expression he made and what they meant: From the furrowed brow and the quirk of his mouth from chewing on the inside of his cheek, which he usually did when he was thinking deeply about something. To the exact curve of his smirk and how he'd readjust his hold on his sword when he'd win a sparring match. And when he was mad or stressed out about something, he'd always had a set to his shoulders that was a little higher than usual.

Since they were small, Riku and Sora teased back and forth about how she wore her Heart on her sleeve. Yet Riku didn't ever realize he wore his Heart _everywhere._

But the Riku the stood before them was different from the boy they'd encountered hardly thirty minutes ago. Not only in the clothes, but in demeanor. This Riku was wearing an expression she hadn't ever seen before; The upward tilt of his chin, the cold glint in his eye…those were new. On top of his voice, which sounded as if two people were speaking out of one windpipe.

It was Donald that spoke next. "What? Are you saying that thing flying around out there is Maleficent?"

Riku gave a nod. "She failed to notice the Darkness in her Heart eating away at her, and all it took was a little push for her to fall to the heartless that she claimed to control." Riku gestured one arm widely around the room and outstretched the other towards empty space. "A fitting end for such a fool."

The hand that was extended towards nothing now grazed across the edges of a newly summoned portal. Its unsettling violet light cast odd shadows across his face as he gave them a last smile before vanishing. Sora couldn't stifle a shake. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Goofy and Donald doing the same.

That smile—it was like the edge of a knife.

* * *

 **RIKU**

It didn't feel real to watch his own hands stab that Dark keyblade into Maleficent's back. And it didn't feel real to watch himself cast magic, and to feel its sting as her own spells fought back. It felt like he was watching a movie played out in first-person.

And, though Riku was reluctant to admit it, it felt like a memory from years and years ago. When he and Sora were still small.

Well, not that small, really. They were ten or eleven by that point, and if Riku remembered correctly it was during one summer break when he and Sora were lying around bored out of their minds and unable to come up with any ideas for what to do. It was raining outside, he knew that for sure, or otherwise they would have probably sparred or something. But Kairi couldn't come over that day because she had something to do with her dad or whatever, and so it was just him and Sora over at her house.

He couldn't remember exactly how she came up with it, but Sora had dug out one of her dad's ratty old t-shirts her mom still had, and they tried wearing it at the same time and doing everyday stuff while being stuck together. The fun was only momentary, and they eventually got bored of that too and put it away to try something else.

But it was the exact same feeling as now. Like he was trying to wear an old shirt with somebody else at the same time. Except unlike then when he could still move his own arms and legs however he wanted, albeit constrained, now he couldn't do anything at all.

 _This will be worth it,_ he promised himself. It did nothing to help the feeling that his skin, his hands, his legs and his Heart and his eyes and his ears and his _everything_ had become like an old shirt he was sharing with someone else.

As Riku's scant access to his own body was cut off by Ansem—A necessity, he was told, but Riku couldn't understand why he wasn't even allowed to watch what Ansem was going to do if it was supposed to be for good intentions—he thought back to those last few seconds of sight and sound, where they stood watching Maleficent transform into a dragon. She had never told him she could do that. But then again, she had never told him a great many things until he had forced her hand.

A dragon. Riku knew Sora would get a kick out of that. She always had been fascinated with the old tales of knights in shining armor and fighting dragons in castles. It was why she had wanted to name the raft _Excalibur_ in the first place.

At the thought of that memory, and at the thought of that nearly-forgotten day where they'd worn that shirt, it only reminded Riku of the countless other times they had spent together. And every one of those moments that flickered in his head, even for a split-second, was enough to make his Heart give a sad, bitter pang.

He wanted to hate her. He wanted to hate her for leaving him and Kairi behind, for finding replacements for the replacements, for choosing the Light over them, over him. He wanted to hate her so badly.

And yet now, as much as he tried, Riku couldn't. Or, more accurately, he wouldn't. Because there was the growing sense that maybe she had never wanted to leave them behind all along.

Sora could have named that rocket anything she wanted. Whether it could have been _Excalibur,_ or any other name lifted from the tales she poured over, or even call it _Gumball_ if she wanted to be nostalgic…but she didn't.

She named the rocket _Highwind._

All because he had won the races, the spars. 'Fair and square', the duck had quoted. Riku didn't stop the little laugh he'd made mentally at that thought (as he had no mouth to laugh aloud with at the moment). He had cheated on the last race with never bothering to fix that one platform, and Sora still considered it fair. She had always been way too forgiving.

The last thing Riku saw was the dragon Maleficent stalking out of the chamber, as Ansem waved Riku's hand to make some sort of a barrier appear over Kairi's body before she passed over her and risked injury. With Ansem there, Riku could do magic now, too. Before it had only been Sora who could, another thing for Riku to have harbored no small amount of envy over, but unlocking his was one of the first things Ansem had done. Telling Riku not to mind the screaming was the second.

Right. The screaming.

It wasn't that bad for what he had gotten in return, he figured. Ominous, certainly, but it sounded as though it came from very far off, and according to Ansem it didn't mean anything anyways. 'Naught but the ravings of a madman', he put it.

 _How can we hear him at all?_ Riku asked him. It was a strange sort of asking, using thoughts on his end with Ansem answering through Riku's mouth. But it worked alright.

"Connections between Hearts can yield an awareness of one another over unlikely distances."

 _Connection? How did you connect with him? When?_

"Much in the same way you and I did, a long time ago. As I said, don't pay him any mind."

And that was that.

The third thing Ansem did, after the defeat of Maleficent, was time travel. Or so Ansem had told him, because for most of it Riku didn't remember much of anything beyond that it hurt. Badly. And when he thought the pain was over with it had returned as if it never left. When he had asked about where the pain was coming from, and how Riku was still able to feel it while disconnected from himself, Ansem had bitterly told him to keep quiet. And so Riku did.

He supposed the time traveling was over now. It hadn't hurt in a while, but Riku still couldn't see anything at all. Couldn't hear anything at all. Without eyes or ears or anything it seemed as if he was floating in the middle of some black formless void somewhere.

 _Where are you taking us now?_

Ansem didn't respond. And so, with nothing else to distract himself with, he thought back to the last few moments just after that keyblade had stabbed into Maleficent.

 _The room had gone quite quiet, a vast departure from the near-hurricane of magic that had howled within it just seconds before. Maleficent went still the instant the tip of the keyblade pierced her back and went right through into where her Heart must have been. Darkness began to seep out around the edges, and he slowly pulled away the keyblade._

 _Maleficent staggered forward as she leaned on her staff, and from somewhere in the room they heard Diablo's call that sounded as pained as his mistress must be. But the raven was nowhere to be seen._

" _I had forgotten this feeling," Maleficent hissed as she clutched a hand to her chest. She took a shaking step around to look them in the eye. Her green skin gained a pallor Riku hadn't ever thought it could. "Darkness. True Darkness."_

" _It feels like power, doesn't it?" Ansem said._

" _It does," She acceded. "But it does not feel like control."_

" _The boy isn't sure what you mean."_

" _He'll know soon enough," Maleficent then looked up at the enormous portal they had constructed in the back of the room, surrounded by rubble from their fight. Her power had not been enough to protect this area, with it being the stage for their struggle, but it was enough to preserve most of the machinery and keep the Princesses of Hearts' area impeccable. But not for much longer now. Ansem turned back, and Riku saw she was looking him in the eye once more. Riku then got that same feeling he had gotten so many times over the course of their working together in Hollow Bastion, the feeling that Maleficent was staring straight through into his soul._

" _I was right, my child, wasn't I?" She gave a breathless laugh. Darkness traced her every move. "You really do make for a beautiful heartless."_

 _And then she exploded into a column of green flame._

Ansem had refused to tell Riku what she meant. Riku didn't like that at all, but he supposed that was better than the lying he had dealt with before. He would have sighed if he had his lungs.

Riku couldn't help but wonder if this was how Kairi had felt without her Heart. Did she miss being able to walk and talk as much as he did right now? She clearly had to be capable of inhabiting at least a small part of her body, considering she was capable of tears at seeing Sora again.

And thinking of _that_ incident and his subsequent reminder of it to Sora made Riku feel something he wasn't sure he could diagnose. The more he thought about it, the less happy he was that they had that kind of argument in the first place, even though it won him the keyblade back. He had lost his temper there, and Riku didn't like the thought of that at all—well, really, he had been losing his temper all day so far. First with Sora on her arrival, and next with his rage in the chapel.

Sure, he had done it for a justifiable reason: Maleficent could have been doing anything to Kairi. But then he just gave up on trying when the duck and dog showed up, and then Sora with her new friends (which he was still a little sour about, even now that he'd mostly set aside the bulk of his ire). Riku left Kairi behind out of mere social inconvenience. His friend.

" _She needed us, and you left her behind,"_ He had told Sora. Ugh, he really was being a hypocrite then, wasn't he?

He had left Kairi's body alone, and it resulted in Maleficent stealing her away. And then he had left her alone again when he ditched trying to find another way past the illusory wall. Sure, it had gained him the keyblade and a means to defeat Maleficent on top of that. But when he'd ditched her both times he didn't really _know_ for a fact whether or not those things would happen. He was just gambling with her life.

If he had a stomach, it would have started to churn by now. And if he had hands, he would have held his head in shame.

 _When will you be done with my body?_ He asked. Staying here like this with only his thoughts for company was like all the countless times he laid in bed and couldn't fall asleep because he was too busy feeling ashamed of himself for small things like making a joke that fell flat. Except this time it wasn't something small. It was something big. Several big things. Which made it much worse.

Ansem didn't respond this time either.

" _You and Kairi are still my friends even now, Riku. Just because someone makes new friends doesn't mean they ditch their old ones. Why do you think I'm here, anyway?"_

Obviously Sora was here to take Kairi back, that was for sure. But considering that Riku had been believing himself to be the one that would help get her Heart back, and ultimately had acted in his own interests…maybe it would have been better to let Sora get Kairi back on _The Jolly Roger._ Maybe. Considering that now he knew Sora hadn't forgotten them after all what with her keeping the name _Highwind._ But then again, even if she did care about helping Kairi get her Heart back it wasn't as if she knew how to do so.

But then again _again_ , it wasn't as if Riku knew how to get her Heart back either. Perhaps Ansem would know?

 _Hey, Ansem? Do you know how to get Kairi's Heart back? Or at least do you know where it is?_

This time, he answered.

"Certainly I know it's whereabouts," His disjointed voice replied. Riku could hear Ansem's smile in the way he shaped his words. "As for how to get it back, why do you think I made the keyblade we used to defeat Maleficent?"

Riku hadn't considered that. He thought it was just like any other keyblade, albeit one formed from the Hearts of the Princesses of Heart. Riku didn't like that part at all, but he accepted it at the time with the idea that the ends justified the means since it resulted in the Princesses' biggest threat being taken care of. Hopefully when Ansem gave him his body back Riku could figure out a way to get them free of those glass enclaves and get their Hearts back.

"Wrong, boy. This keyblade is not like any other at all. In fact, there are very, very few of its kind, and even this one stands out from its fellows. You see, there are keyblades of Light and keyblades of Darkness. What kind they are depends on what realm to which they belong, as well as what they can do. Keyblades of Light and Dark deal only with matters of Light and Dark, but our mission deals with matters of the Heart."

 _So obviously that keyblade deals with Hearts?_

"Indeed, it does."

 _How would that be any different from the Kingdom Key or whatever it was you called it? I thought that dealt with Hearts too since it got the Hearts free from the heartless._

Riku had noticed the glowing Hearts flying away from the heartless that had lost control and attacked him during the short time the duck and dog tagged along with him. The duck had to explain to him that that was what usually happened with the keyblade, as nothing but Darkness ever came out of the heartless he had defeated in his training before.

"It is not quite the same in scope, though that function is identical with this keyblade. The Kingdom Key deals with the Heart's Light, and its twin does similar with the Darkness of the Heart. But we cannot do this work piecemeal. We must do our work with Hearts in terms of the entire Heart, not merely half. Remember how Maleficent turned into a dragon when her Heart was pierced with this keyblade? I unlocked her Heart so that it would accept the Darkness I offered in full."

 _When her Heart was overcome with Darkness, why didn't she turn into a heartless?_

"I suppose my wording was less than optimal there. Fairies don't have Hearts like you and I do—they are beings of pure magic. If a keyblade such as ours were to pierce one, like then, it would reduce them to the most primal form of their power. In Maleficent's case this was a dragon."

He supposed that made sense.

 _So earlier you said you know where Kairi's Heart is? Where?_

Riku had noticed immediately how Ansem didn't initially answer as straightforwardly as he would have liked. He hoped that asking again would yield some sort of clue as to where Kairi's Heart was, though he figured more than likely there would only be silence once again. _At least now there won't be lying,_ he comforted himself.

But this time there was no silence whatsoever, for Ansem laughed in reply.

"Shouldn't you know? You were the one to tell us, after all."

Just like when Maleficent had laughed at him two days before, Riku once more felt as though he had made some horrible mistake. And once more, he wasn't sure what it was.

As Ansem continued to laugh, Riku desperately thought _This is fine. This is fine._ He was okay with the events that were unfolding currently—Maleficent was gone now, right? He had his keyblade back and an extra to boot. Surely Ansem was doing good with Riku's body, even if he refused to answer when he would give it back. That was okay.

Things were going to be okay.

If Riku had hands, he would have started wringing them. If he had lungs, he would have sighed. But he had neither.

" _The boy asked for glory, Maleficent. And glory I shall give,"_ Ansem had said. Was this what glory was supposed to feel like? A body that felt like a ratty old t-shirt stretched over a stranger? As much as he tried, Riku couldn't bring himself to believe that. This didn't feel like any sort of glory Riku had known before.

In fact, Riku was beginning to think this wasn't what glory was supposed to feel like at all.

* * *

 **SORA**

From much closer, so close it made the floor shake, the trio heard the dragon's—Maleficent's—shriek once more.

Sora ran over to the open wall and watched as Maleficent gave one great shuddering beat of her wings. In her dragon form, and even before that when she resembled something much closer to humanity, Sora had always gotten the vibe that Maleficent was like some sort of bird of prey. A vulture with horns and green skin, that called to her victims with false promises instead of birdsong.

She looked down and suddenly the ground far below felt even farther away than before. Her toes were beginning to hang off of the edge, and Sora inched backward. Maleficent flew closer.

Sora had no idea of what to do.

But then again, hadn't that turned out to be sort of the theme for today? It was the theme for her whole journey so far, really, and everything had continued to work out sort of okay at least. She hadn't gotten back her keyblade yet, and now her wooden sword was broken, but there had to be another way, hadn't there? There was always a way.

Maleficent was getting closer, now. Sora could feel herself light up as finally the beginnings of a plan came to mind.

Well, half of a plan anyway. Sora decided she'd just figure it out as she went. It wasn't as if she could just sit here and do nothing while the city was getting destroyed.

 _Keep a steady pace._

And with that thought in mind Sora leapt out the window.

She could hear Donald and Goofy calling after her as she started to fall towards the scaly expanse of Maleficent's back, and they were soon drowned out by the roaring of the wind in her ears. Closer and closer. Farther and faster.

And then Sora stopped falling. She hovered in midair.

Maleficent passed by underneath and Sora could feel her hair whip around her face from the force of the wind as she beat her wings. The nearly-severed edge of the wooden sword teetered dangerously on the last few strings of fiber that were holding it together.

"What were you _thinking?_ " Donald nearly screamed. "Have you gone crazy?"

"That sure would've hurt if Donald hadn't caught you," Goofy worried.

"Aw c'mon guys, it would have been fine," Sora said. "I timed it so that I could land on her back and attack her from there. I'd be totally okay."

"Attack her with what, that broken sword?" Donald continued to shout, "And don't say magic, I'm not sure that would even work! You've seen the kind of magic she can cast, she could still be capable of it as a dragon. And what if your timing was wrong?"

"I, uh," Maybe he had a point there with the timing. "I'm sure it would have worked out somehow. But look, we've gotta do something! We can't just let the whole place burn, this was Cid's and the rest of the gang's home."

"Leon said Traverse Town was their home now! You can't fight a dragon with a toothpick!"

"Rude."

"But it's true," Donald huffed. Maleficent roared again, and they all looked over to see her breathe green flames on the rooftops a ways beyond as towering vines sprung up all around. "She probably could use that thing as a toothpick now, if she doesn't incinerate it first. She could probably use all of us as toothpicks too. Can't you spend five seconds thinking of a plan before you run in at least once in your life?"

"Alright," Sora conceded. And she did.

Donald, as much as she hated to admit it, was right; The now-broken wooden sword would be hopeless both as a weapon and as a channel for magic, if magic was out of the question like he said. Except maybe a ridiculously strong frost spell might work against those flames? Or Maleficent could just aim a good sneeze at it and then Sora would be out of magic and on fire, too.

Ooh, she could try landing on Maleficent's back again and poke holes in her wings! That way Maleficent would at least be confined to the ground since she couldn't fly, and the potential for damaging everything would be hindered by her reach. Sora wasn't sure how well Maleficent would be able to spin her head around and get Sora if she were on her back, but if she wandered out far enough along a wing Sora was sure she could still get hurt. She'd just have to be careful.

Ugh, she really wished she had the keyblade back. This would be so much easier.

Or would it? The keyblade wasn't much bigger than her wooden sword anyways, even if it wasn't as likely to break. And magic with it was still out of the equation. It wasn't like she was a heartless anyway, Sora was pretty sure, there was no emblem like the others. So that was out. All she'd be able to do with the keyblade would be to poke holes more efficiently and maybe give her a good slap or two before the fire breathing kicked in. A dragon as big as Maleficent would require a weapon as big as her.

…Now thatwas an idea.

"I've got a plan now," Sora spoke up. "Can you float me over to the gummi ship?"

"Already? You spent maybe three seconds coming up with something," Donald deadpanned.

"Fine," One hippopotamus. Two hippopotamus. "Okay, can you float me over there now?"

"That was two seconds at the most!"

"Three plus two equals five. C'mon Donald, just float me over already."

"Why do you want to go to the gummi ship so badly?"

"I'll tell you when I get there."

He gave her a long, suspicious look. "Fine. But we're going with you."

"Wait, what?" Sora watched as Donald cast another spell and he and Goofy both began to float off of the precipice as well, and when the trio started to float in the direction of the gummi ship down below she asked, "Aren't you supposed to be following Riku?"

"Bah! He ran off again in one of those portals of Darkness, remember?" Donald crossed his arms. "We couldn't follow him if we tried. And we've already tried. Besides, we can't let you go getting yourself hurt."

"That's right!" Goofy cheered, before turning slightly downcast. "But Riku doesn't want to stick with us at all. Did we make him mad?"

"Even if we did, that doesn't justify him calling us barnyard animals! I'm no common duck!"

"And he sure yelled at Sora earlier too."

"He's not mad at you guys, he's mad at me. Riku's not usually like this at all," Sora said. "I don't know what's gotten into him today, or even in the past month. You all noticed his new outfit and the voice change there, right?"

"His voice was spooky," Goofy shivered again. The gummi ship came closer as they continued to drift. "I was wonderin' then if that was really the same Riku we met earlier. He felt different."

"I'm sure it was," Sora noticed there were now heartless running up and down the streets and around the citadel. Unlike Maleficent, they didn't seem to care about destroying the city and instead were focused on finding potential victims. From this height, they looked like ants crawling over each other. "But it was like I didn't recognize him there. Riku's never looked like that before, you know what I mean? Not the outfit, but his face. That grin."

The topic was put aside when Donald pointed to the heartless beginning to accrue around where he was trying to land them. _Highwind_ , from what they could see,was thankfully left alone.

"We'll have to move quick."

Sora shot off lightning spell after lightning spell as they finished their descent, but for every heartless she picked off another took its place. The second their feet touched the pavement they sped towards the gummi ship, alternating between shoving away and shaking off the growing numbers of the foes.

As Goofy attempted to shut the hatch behind them past the heartless' reaching arms, Sora made her way to the cockpit at a breakneck pace before Donald could figure out what she was going to do and flopped down into the captain's chair. She began hastily flipping switches and pulling levers as Donald walked in and tried to make his way to the captain's chair before seeing her in it. He gave a jumbled outraged noise at the sight.

"What—You hooligan! I had a feeling you were going to do something like this when you wouldn't say why you needed the gummi ship!" He scolded, and peered warily when he saw her succeeding at turning on the gummi ship and it roared to life. "How do you know which controls to use?"

Sora threw him a wily smile over her shoulder. "Sometimes I pay attention."

He spluttered at that. "Only when you want to! Now give me back my chair!"

"No!"

"What's the fuss?" Goofy asked as he walked in, and guffawed as it dawned on him what Sora had done. "She got you good, Donald!"

"It's not funny," He retorted as he stamped his foot. "That's it. Autopilot, initiate voice recognition override! Turn off the ship!"

The speakers rang out with a chime, and the engine winded down.

"No-o-o!" Sora begged as she pounded her fists against the armrests, "Donald, c'mon! Don't be like that!"

"You're absolutely not going to drive the ship, you already crashed it once!"

"How does that argument make sense, you crashed it twice!"

"And neither time was my fault!" Donald protested.

"Maybe we should hear her out Donald, ahyuk!"

"Oh, don't _you_ start!"

They all froze when Maleficent roared again, much closer than they thought she was. Past the blanket of heartless now beginning to cover the windshield, the trio could see bright green flames in the sky peek out from between blackened claws.

Donald furrowed his brow at her. "Out of the chair, I gotta get us away from all these heartless and that thing."

She shook her head.

"Out of the chair!"

"Nope. At least hear me out."

Maleficent roared once more, and Donald dragged a feathered hand down the side of his face. "Alright, tell us. But make it quick."

As Sora detailed her plan, albeit hastily made, she could see Donald and Goofy beginning to look thoughtful. Donald even nodded at several points.

"So you see?" She gestured to the windshield, which was by now completely covered with heartless. "Even if I had the keyblade I don't think it would do anything useful. 'Cause I'm pretty sure she's not a heartless anyway. Just a giant dragon and we'd be going up against it with itty bitty weapons. But we could stand a chance if we fight her with not-so-itty-bitty weapons like the gummi ship. Doesn't this thing have lasers or something anyway? We could just pew-pew her out of existence," Sora flicked her fingers to emulate an explosion as she searched the console. "Where's the laser button?"

"That sounds like a good idea," Donald admitted. "Now get out of the chair, I'll pilot."

Sora's face fell. "Oh come on, seriously? I'm the one who came up with it. I wanna carry it out."

"Absolutely not."

"Goofy?"

He looked between them. Donald with his furrowed brow that demanded Goofy should take his side, and Sora with her best attempt at puppy dog eyes under the circumstances.

"I, uh, well," Goofy finally shrugged. "I don't see the harm in letting Sora give it a try so long as you tell 'er how to take off and land and do everything else right."

Sora whooped as Donald nearly barked, "What? You're suggesting we teach her how to pilot a gummi ship when we're about to fight a dragon?!"

"He sure is!"

"No, this is ridiculous," Donald said as he started to turn, "I can't be the only one thinking this is crazy. I…"

He stopped himself mid-sentence, and both Goofy and Sora turned to see that Donald caught sight of the broken wooden sword lying on the floor. Sora had dropped it in her fervor to get to the captain's chair in time. He must have been thinking of when he and Goofy had left her behind earlier, after she'd lost the keyblade.

From a lifetime of experience with her mother, and with how well she'd come to know Donald, Sora knew he must be very close to giving in at this point. She didn't dare breathe a word as the pause dragged on, lest she ruin her chances.

"…Autopilot, disengage voice recognition override. Admin permission: Donald."

Donald dragged his feet towards the chair that Sora usually sat in and sagged into it before buckling in as the gummi ship gave another chime and its engine started once more. As Goofy situated himself as well, Donald piped up, "But you're going to have to listen to me. When I say don't do something, you better not do it."

"Got it!"

"And when I say do something, you better do it."

"Absolutely!"

"And when I say _how_ to do something, you better do it exactly as I say! No messing around!"

"No messing around here, no sir!"

"Good," Donald crossed his arms as he scrutinized the windshield covered with heartless. Their claws tapping against the reinforced glass sounded like hail. "First things first, turn on the wipers by flicking the green switch on the top left side to the highest setting so we can start getting those things off."

She did. Most of the heartless were pushed aside, but a couple of them lingered by grabbing onto the wipers and were currently being pushed back and forth across the trio's view, making a sliding noise as they were smeared around. Sora was reminded of the little heartless at the sight of them, and her Heart gave a small pang.

"That works for now, I guess," Donald supposed. They could now see Maleficent bank a turn and go careening towards the far side of the city. More green flames could be seen in the distance. "Now for taking off. You've got one hand on the control wheel? Okay, now with the other hand grab onto the throttle lever there beside you and push forward gently— _I said gently!_ —and we can go from there."

He started her off on simple things—or as simple as one could manage with a dragon flying around in the vicinity, that quickly zeroed in on them after they got too close by accident.

"I told you to turn more narrowly!"

"I tried!" They all jumped in their seats as Maleficent roared from much closer than any of them would have liked. Sora veered the wheel to the right as she pushed the throttle as far as it would go, and felt herself get pushed into her seat as _Highwind_ went at a blinding pace. The outlying buildings of Hollow Bastion began to blur together as the great expanse of the water got closer. "She keeps following me, what am I supposed to do now? Zig-zag? More lasers? That first round only made her mad," Sora chewed at her lip at the thought, and continued to turn the gummi ship in a large circle. Maleficent followed, like a great black smudge against the sunset. The very first stars of the evening were just beginning to come out, and this time they were not a comforting sight at all.

"Shield!" Goofy ordered, before quickly covering his mouth with his hands. His muzzle turned slightly green.

"Which button was that one again?"

"The yellow one, press it now!" Donald answered, and Sora smacked the newly-installed button (courtesy of Cid and her's combined efforts) with her fist barely a second before the flames reached them.

The trio's posture slumped as the fire blazed harmlessly over the outer surface of the shield, and Sora desperately hoped the shield would hold even just a second longer than Maleficent's breath.

"You guys, there's gotta be something else we can do," Sora wasn't sure how much time they had, nor was she sure if Maleficent even had any weak spots to exploit. The eyes? Her stomach? Sora had managed to singe a few holes in her wings, enough to leak Dark smoke, but it was nowhere near enough to hinder her flight. It was hard enough as it was to land a hit on her at all. "All we're managing now is avoiding her, and we can barely do that."

She cursed when the shield gave out and the last of Maleficent's flames began to lick at the hull, and Sora swerved the gummi ship again back towards the citadel. The shields took ten seconds to recharge, a fact she miserably reminded herself when she could see Maleficent resume her pursuit.

"Use the shields!" Donald suggested. She spared him a dumbfounded glance.

"I just used them! They haven't charged back yet!"

"No, I mean," They all flinched as Sora barely missed clipping a wing on one of the spires. "When you get the chance, turn on the shields and try to smack her head on! They should protect the gummi ship from getting hit!"

It was as if a lightbulb went off above her head.

"Donald, why didn't you ever tell us you were a genius?" Sora asked as she decided to try and thread through the spires again. The screen for the camera on the back of the gummi ship showed Maleficent was having trouble dodging the structures, with several already beginning to crumble from being hit, and she could see one exhaust pipe up ahead start to spurt out a thick black cloud of whatever it was they'd seen them do upon arrival. Sora aimed to go straight through it.

"You should've already known that!"

"Sure, but it's always nice to see proof," Sora muttered as the windshield was blacked out once more with the black smoke, and she hoped there weren't any more spires along their trajectory. Cid would probably invent six new curse words if the ship needed repairs yet again even with their work.

"I _heard_ you."

She didn't respond as the windshield cleared and they continued flying into the open air, and a quick glance down at the screen told her that Maleficent hadn't made it past the smoke yet. Perfect. Sora pulled back the throttle until the ship came close to stopping and then pulled the control wheel to the left as far as it could go.

Slowly, the gummi ship pulled around in an arc, and the brightly colored point of its front was facing Maleficent as her glowing green eyes began to peek out from the smoke cloud. And then her horns.

Sora gently squeezed the lever to the throttle as she inched it forward. _Highwind_ began to move.

"Turn on the shields," Donald ordered.

Sora shook her head. "Not yet."

She inched forward the throttle a little more, and then more. Maleficent began to open her mouth, revealing rows upon rows of teeth just like a shark. Not for the first time, Sora wondered how she was able to turn into something like this. Was it really just magic, or something else?

"Turn on the shields!"

"Not yet!"

 _Highwind_ bypassed the glide into an outright careening speed, and the trio were pushed back into their chairs again as Sora continued to push the throttle lever more. Maleficent's throat started to glow green through her scales, and Sora saw curls of fire snake past the back of her tongue. The gummi ship was now close enough for the trio to see the spiderweb of veins on the skin of her wings.

"TURN ON THE SHIELDS!"

And she did.

Back on the islands, apart from the usual revelry of sparring, movie nights, or whatever else they could think of, the kids used to play a game on their bikes called 'Chicken'.

Key word being _used_ to. Every one of the kids that often hung out on the play island that was there that day for the incident in question—every last one, even including Irvine and Zell—was given a grim warning by Sora's mother that they were to never play the game again. And the kids, cowed by her demeanor, readily agreed. Especially after seeing the new crisscrossed scar on Tidus' face from the incident after the bandages came off.

Even though he said he was quite proud of the scar, for he felt it made him look much cooler than before, the fact was that the doctor said he came close to losing an eye.

Sora was reminded of the game now as she watched the shields spread across the gummi ship. Like this was just another game of Chicken, albeit one against a dragon, as Maleficent got closer and closer. Until she didn't.

Sora held a hand to her own jaw with a wince as she watched Maleficent's open mouth bend far more than seemed natural with a noise exactly like a tree branch splitting as she collided with the shield. The first traces of green fire lapped fitfully without any harm done to the trio or their ship, and with a bellow Maleficent began to fall.

Her first collision with a spire on the way down was disastrous; The finely barbed adornment on the spire's pinnacle was placed at just the right angle and position to pierce in between the plates of her scales, and her own green fire seeped out of the wound and could no longer reach her broken mouth. The spire crashed down with her, and others laid their own marks on the dragon—Some tore the thin membranes of her wings into ribbons, with others continuing to lodge themselves in the crevices of her scales wherever was in their trajectory. And others still did naught more than act as blunt weapons as she fell and pulled them with her.

The vast Dark might of Maleficent diminished more and more as she continued to fall away, and soon all the trio could see of her was a misshapen blackened lump seething with the last dregs of that green fire.

Goofy spoke first as he lowered his gloved hands from his face. His muzzle had returned to its normal shade.

"Is Maleficent really…?" _Is she really gone?_

"I-I'm not sure," Sora stammered, "I'll try to get a better look."

Sora piloted the gummi ship out of the spires through the path that Maleficent had carved out as she fell, and cautiously lowered them to see if she was finally defeated. Heartless were still running in aimless paths along the streets, which were now nearly overtaken with barbed vines. In the distance, long streaks of smoke still rose past the last dregs of sunlight along the horizon.

Crumpled up like this, even in her staggeringly large dragon form, she was terrifying in a diminished way. The teeth still jutted out, with some of them at odd angles from the collision as her jaw hung wide open, the torn batlike wings still crisscrossed with a spiderweb of veins across the panels. The glare that reflected the dying light of the sun with an unearthly sheen deep in their sockets like cats' eyes. It still seemed as though she could spring back up at any moment, though they could see she no longer drew breath.

And then, for one horrorstruck moment, the group thought she did exactly that. Donald and Goofy clung to their armrests with startled yelps as green flames erupted all around the city once more, and Sora's hands darted to the controls as she readied to fight. But the body did not stir. The flames consumed the body and the vines, devouring any evidence of Maleficent's existence and vanishing the moment their task was done.

All that remained, finally, was a smear on the cracked pavement where their opponent once lay. The far-off towers of smoke dissipated into the night sky, and Sora could see small pinpricks of light above and below as the eyes of the heartless resembled the stars that were unveiling themselves much faster now than before.

"Wow," Was all Sora could say as the trio took in the sight.

"Yeah," Donald agreed.

She eyed the heartless again. "Do you think all of the heartless are wandering the streets now? Or at least not too many are still in the castle?"

"You're thinkin' about Riku and Kairi?" Goofy asked.

Sora nodded. "We've still gotta go after them, too. Even if Riku's weird now."

"Beast is still in there too," Donald mentioned.

"That's true," She continued to inspect the streets. "How should we get to them? I dunno about leaving the gummi ship down there again, since night's here and the heartless are going to be kind of. Um. Yeah."

"Maybe we could park it in that big ol' room we fell from?" Goofy suggested.

Donald made an unsure noise. "Do you think it's big enough for the gummi ship?"

"It was big enough for Maleficent," She shrugged. With minimal work at the controls, Sora began the return back to the chapel from whence they came. A mischievous smile curled at the corners of her mouth. "And if it's not big enough for us, I can just use the shields and make it big enough."

Donald and Goofy, respectively, gave a scoff and a chortle. But neither refuted her logic.

"What'll we do if Riku's run off again? D'ya think we should search the castle?" Goofy wondered.

"Oh phooey," Donald spat. "I don't wanna waste time looking for him if he's gonna be so crabby."

"But the king told us to follow him, Donald."

"Don't remind me!"

"If Riku's still gone, we'll just search for Kairi first," Sora said as the great hole in the side of the citadel Maleficent had made came into view. "Really we should be doing that anyways since she's missing her Heart and all. She needs our help more right now. Riku still can run at least, if he can't defend himself. Which I'm sure he can, he's got the keyblade on top of how he's always been really ridiculously good at—He's back!"

They turned to see a small figure in the chapel standing back at the side of the previously hidden entrance, right where he was before they left to fight.

Riku.

It would have been almost impossible to see him even from their shortened distance in this light, or lack thereof, due to his dark clothes. The only way Sora saw him at all was because of a stray moonbeam getting caught in his silvery hair. She unbuckled her seat belt and quickly got up.

"Donald, can you park it for me?"

"Sure," Donald said with some surprise as he began to get out of the seat. He looked back at her as she made to leave the cockpit. "What are you going to do?"

Sora's foot brushed against the broken toy sword and she stopped for a minute to look down at it. Should she still take it with her now, or not?

Donald was now starting to angle _Highwind_ back into the chapel, and Sora finally decided to go ahead and pick it up anyways. Even if it was broken, she thought to herself, she had a feeling she would need it.

"I'm going to go after him."

* * *

 **KAIRI**

It wasn't long after the transformed Maleficent passed over her that Kairi was disconnected from her body again. Back in the white room, she sighed in relief. The boy in the pale throne continued to sleep.

When Maleficent and Ansem had fought, Kairi didn't hear much of what they said. Only short snippets of deceptively light conversation here and there in the middle of that great hurricane of magic, as if they were two old friends having a casual chat instead of a fight to the death. To the death, Kairi inwardly mused as she watched the scaly tip of Maleficent's tail pass over and thought back to Riku's change, or to transformation.

She heard footsteps come closer, and Ansem appeared. He looked down at her with a wry smile.

"Perhaps you might not remember me, or perhaps you do," He said. "And I'm not speaking of the face I wear now. You and I both know well how clearly you can see. Tell me, how many Hearts do I have now? What do they look like?" Ansem chuckled, "I'm sure you must be seeing your friend's Heart amongst my own."

As he spoke, his skin moved strangely over his bones. Like the movements of the muscles in his face didn't quite match. A stranger in familiar flesh.

If Kairi could have shivered, she would. But this time, she was thankful she couldn't.

He didn't flinch at the sound of Maleficent crashing through something not too far beyond. Instead, he kept his gaze trained on her, though she knew she must have looked unresponsive in his eyes. Eventually he started to walk on, and waved his hand carelessly as heartless burst from Dark portals in all corners of the room and scooped her up to move her away.

"Put her in front of the keyhole, and make sure to give her a good view," Ansem ordered them. He turned back around. "She's a friend of mine, even if she might not remember me. Memories always are such tricky things, aren't they?"

He chuckled again. "I am pleased to see you again, Miss Kairi."

Apprentice Xehanort.

She had already known it was him, but that only confirmed it. Kairi watched him over the heartless' grasp as he left and knew she wouldn't ever forget the sight of the ghost Heart—and Riku's own alongside it now, struggling far more with its fitful lone star of Light in the middle of all that Darkness—behind the coal-black Heart that eclipsed them. Swallowed them. And then he was gone around the corner.

The heartless lowered her to the floor of the platform where Ansem and Maleficent had had their duel. Contrary to Ansem's—Apprentice Xehanort's—request, it had deposited her without much care to her placement. But somehow she ended up at the right angle anyway to see an enormous swirling portal before her on the far wall, framed by ruin and crackling machinery. A portal shaped like a heart that ended in three points at the tip.

The outline of the heartless emblem. Kairi had seen this portal before.

 _("I don't care what happens to me. Please, just save my granddaughter.")_

 _No,_ she thought desperately. Not now. Not again.

Kairi smelled smoke that wasn't there. Heard the rumblings of a thousand gnarled feet that weren't there. But both would come along soon enough.

If she had her body back, she would have lost the ability to breathe at the sight of the end of the world. The end of her world, it once was.

And now it would be the end of all worlds.

 _("Kairi, dear, my time is behind me. I brought you here to make sure you were safe, and that is all I want. Nothing else is important.")_

Why hadn't she asked about her brother that day? Or her parents? Why hadn't her grandmother mentioned them?

Unless…Apprentice Xehanort messed with her memories of them too. And her grandmother's memories.

 _("And I'll continue to take whatever I need to get to the bottom of what I am. Of what the subjects are.")_

 _And he took everything he needed to keep everyone out of his way, too. Perhaps he took every_ _one_ _he needed on top of that. Maybe he made them all into his army of heartless, and that was how that day came to be._

 _Kairi's eyes skimmed over the large pipes all around. How some were broken open and sparkled with naked bolts of electricity, and others were untouched. The ground looked as though a great explosion had taken place in the middle, presumably where Maleficent had begun her transformation. And all around the periphery were broken chunks of the room itself, fallen from the fight. She followed the line of pipes up towards the ceiling, to a place at the very apex of the archway that separated this area from the hall where the other Princesses of Heart slept in their unnatural state._

 _There it is,_ _she thought._

 _When Kairi was first brought in here, she had wondered where she was supposed to be placed. With six niches in the wall, and three on either side in perfect symmetry, the lack of one for her was obvious. But now she realized Maleficent had planned for the possibility that Riku would discover the area and her plans for Kairi by using that design, to hide her in case they had ever gotten her Heart before the others._

 _Her Heart, that Sora would inadvertently deliver right to their front door._

 _("One day when you're in trouble, the Light within you will lead you to the Light of another.")_

 _("The road to ruin is often paved with good intentions," King Triton said quietly as he observed the broken objects all around them.)_

If she could, she would thrown up at the sight of that glass coffin.

That Kairi-shaped space.

* * *

 **RIKU**

"Maleficent was right about one thing," Ansem said dryly. "You truly are inclined towards wailing. You want to see her? Then you shall have it, boy."

 _For the last time, I'm not wailing! I just wanted to make sure she wasn't—_

Riku went quiet as he could see again, and this time they walked into a Dark portal that looked to be located in some sort of a barrens. Dry, cracked earth stretched onward for miles, with enormous plateaus in the periphery like earthly staircases. Dust was still settling from some altercation. As Ansem stepped through, Riku found themselves back in the destroyed chapel of Hollow Bastion, and this time it was practically night with the last dregs of sunlight dipping below the horizon.

Night? Riku remembered the slow picking off of _The Jolly Rogers'_ crew by the heartless, and Maleficent's words on the nighttime's effects on them. If he could, he would have felt a sinking feeling in his chest.

"Not to worry," Ansem placated, and Riku could feel a foreign smile stretch across his mouth. "Unlike the evil fairy, I can still manage them at night. If I wanted to."

That didn't sound as though it boded well. Riku had thought he could trust Ansem.

"Of course you can," He replied as he leaned back on the rubble. Riku could hear the familiar _whoosh_ sound as _Highwind_ approached from somewhere just out of sight. They were getting closer. "You trusted me to defeat Maleficent, and I did. You trusted me to help you keep your keyblade, and I did. In doing so you trusted me to prove yourself worthy of your keyblade over the girl you ask to see now, and I did. I even forged a keyblade more suitable to our nature. I have done everything you asked and more."

Riku couldn't deny that Ansem was right. So why did he feel as though he had made a mistake?

Ansem gave a single hum that sounded close to a laugh.

"Getting cold feet, aren't you?"

 _No,_ Riku replied a little too quickly.

"How funny Hearts can be. They change so quickly, don't they?" Ansem shook his head. "I remember you wanting the girl to learn the same lesson of loneliness you did. And I most certainly remember you had hoped for her to learn of the splendor of Darkness as much as you have. Would it change your mind if I told you I can guarantee both, as well?"

He had no answer for that, beyond _I just don't want her to get hurt._

Riku could feel Ansem's smile spread a little more.

"That, unfortunately, I cannot promise."

As the gummi ship came into view, its palette still stark against the monotone destruction of Hollow Bastion even in the dim light, all Riku could think as _Highwind_ began to angle itself into the room was that he really _had_ made a mistake. A giant, terrible, life-ending mistake. And Riku feared this was just the beginning.

"Not to worry, boy. See? Here she comes now."

He could see a figure leap out of the gummi ship and run towards them before it had even parked, and Riku knew that it had to be Sora.

In a way, Ansem was right—Hearts really could change quickly.

In the beginning of their journey, back in Traverse Town, Riku was so happy to see her that he'd felt butterflies at the sound of her voice alone, even after Maleficent's warnings. By the time of their reunion earlier today, only a scarce few weeks after Traverse Town, Riku wanted her out of his sight.

And now? Well, Riku still wanted her out of his sight. But this time for completely different reasons.

Because Ansem was turning out to be a danger beyond his imagining.

 _Get back on the gummi ship and go, Sora,_ he anxiously thought. _Leave me. We can't save Kairi now, and you can't save this world too. Turn back._

If he had a mouth, he would have shouted. If he had arms and legs, he would have done whatever he could to make her turn back. With force, if Riku had to. Because at least then she'd still be alive. But now Riku had nothing to his name but the shattered promise of glory and a keyblade that was not his own, with the weight of both heavy in his Heart.

"Riku!" Sora shouted as she ran, and he could see something in her hand that was bent nearly in half and swinging this way and that. _The toy sword,_ he realized. _It broke._ It had to have happened with the heartless going crazy with nightfall. There were two moving shapes in the distance after the gummi ship powered down, and Riku knew without even looking that it had to be the other two that always followed her. Donald and Goofy.

He wondered, would they still follow him now? Even when he was like this?

Riku still hoped they wouldn't, but not for the same reasoning as before. As much as he disliked them (and Riku supposed he would always dislike them even a little bit, though he knew they were just doing their job) he didn't want to see them get hurt either.

Riku could feel his mouth move, and Ansem spoke.

"The boy wanted to see you."

"What?" Sora shook her head, and something about the way she scrunched her face up made his Heart hurt even worse. "Riku, why are you talking like that? I know you don't like me anymore or something, but stop being weird. We can work this out later. We've gotta go save Kairi."

"What a coincidence," Ansem replied, "It seems in this matter our itineraries align."

She blinked. "O-kay," Sora drew out the syllables, and Riku just knew she was still thinking he was a giant weirdo for his changed voice. If things weren't becoming so dire, he would have felt embarrassed. "Cool then, I guess. Let's go look for her. She's gotta be around here somewhere."

Sora began to walk off, and Donald and Goofy made to follow, expecting him to come along. But it wasn't long before they noticed Ansem continuing to stand there watching them with that same smile, and they turned.

"Aren't ya going to come with us?" Goofy asked. "We've gotta look for your friend."

"Yeah, Riku, what gives?" Sora added.

 _That's not me,_ Riku thought. _Please, Sora, that's not me._

Ansem ignored him, and said, "There's no need to look, I know exactly where she is. Come."

"You do?"

Ansem said nothing as he turned to walk back into the chamber of the Princesses of Heart, skirting past the rubble without a second glance. Behind him, Riku could hear the trio speak.

"Isn't this that hole Maleficent burst out of?" She inquired.

"And it's where Beast went," Goofy said. "I wonder if he's still in there, I can hear him growling at something."

"Is he saying anything?" Donald asked.

"Nothin' now, but when he first ran in I coulda sworn he said 'Belle'."

They were in the entry tunnel now, and Riku could see the distant blue flames up ahead. If he had a stomach, he would have felt it sinking with every step. If he had even a single blood vessel to call his own now, Riku would have felt it become iced over with dread.

"Belle? Is that where Maleficent put her, you think?"

He had seen the newest addition to Maleficent's collection earlier when Ansem first strode into the chamber wearing him. A girl that looked to be a couple of years older than him, he estimated, wearing a blue overdress layered on top of a white collared shirt, with an apron tied around her waist. A cloak was clasped around her shoulders, as more of that stony material had climbed to her knees in her prison of that last empty space he had wondered over before.

Riku had known in that instant that his guess was right, and Maleficent truly had sent him on the Neverland excursion as a distraction. _I'm sorry,_ he had thought at the time, promising to himself that if any of this worked out in the end that he'd give her and the others an apology in person. They deserved that at least, he figured, considering he had unwittingly had a hand in their current fate.

He'd thought then that at least he would be a part of freeing them, but now Riku had a sense that perhaps he doomed them—and this world, and all the worlds—to something far worse.

"It might be," Goofy figured. "He sure wasn't sayin' it like a question."

"Then Maleficent must have put her with the rest of the girls that went missing!"

"And if Riku's taking us to the same place, she must have put Kairi there with the others. Then…" Donald trailed off.

Riku would have straightened at the revelation if he could. But as it was, he cursed himself with everything he could think of instead. How was it that a duck and a dog were able to put the pieces together faster than him? He thought back to the conversation earlier that day with Maleficent.

" _Stop acting like a rabid animal and think, Riku. Where do you imagine I took her?"_

" _I_ imagine _you're hiding her behind that wall!"_

" _Precisely. It's the most fortified area of the citadel, why wouldn't I choose it?"_

Why wouldn't she choose it, indeed? Where else would Maleficent keep a Princess of Heart, but somewhere she collected all the rest?

His Heart wrenched further in himself as everything began to make perfect, horrible sense.

No wonder Maleficent had gone to such ends to help him with getting Kairi's Heart back.

But at least she had never succeeded, right? And neither had Ansem, yet.

Riku could feel their eyes on his back—Ansem's back now—as the trio began to whisper heatedly amongst themselves. But he paid them no mind. For they were about to enter the hall where the Princesses of Heart were kept. The sound of claws scraping uselessly against enchanted glass came closer.

"—But he wouldn't—There they are!" Sora cried as she darted past into the room.

Donald and Goofy followed shortly behind as Ansem continued to stroll unhurriedly past the braziers, the glass cases. Past a hulking cloaked creature with brown fur, the same one that followed Sora in earlier, that was busy trying franticly to free Belle. Ansem meandered towards the twin staircases up to the platform at the far end of the room. Riku could hear them talking behind him, asking Beast what he was doing, but he paid them no mind this time either. Not now when it felt as though he were an executioner walking up the gallows.

As Ansem climbed the last few steps, Riku caught sight of a familiar head of red hair.

 _Kairi!_

She was lying in an awkward pose on the floor, with her arms lying askew as she lied on her back. Her eyes were closed. Kairi was still utterly lifeless.

"Not for long, my boy," Ansem divulged. "Not for long."

 _What's going to happen? What are you going to do with her? Or any of them?_

All he did was chuckle in response before giving one great leap, and Ansem landed gracefully on top of the large archway in the area where he and Maleficent had had their final duel, the archway that was shaped like the outline of the heartless emblem. Within it swirled countless different colors just like an oil slick. The entire chamber was illuminated with low light, with an unsettling glow over everything supplied by naked bursts of electricity on either side of the archway, as well as the archway itself. From up here, Riku could see the trio dart from Princess to Princess.

"You asked for glory," Ansem spread a hand over the scene, and the Dark keyblade sprung to his grip as he did. "And glory I shall give. I can guarantee it."

 _I don't want anything if it means you're going to hurt them._

"But isn't that exactly what you wanted? Isn't that why you came to me?"

 _I wanted your help because I thought you were my friend!_

"Perhaps one day you will see things from my point of view," Ansem replied. He pointed with the keyblade towards directly across from them, and Riku looked to see another empty space just like the Princesses' down below. "See that? That's where your friend will go. After her Heart helps to complete this blade a little more."

 _Not if I can help it. You're not going to do anything with anyone, I'll stop you before you try._

He chuckled again as he dismissed the keyblade. "But you can't help it, can you?"

Riku had no response for that but a string of curses.

"You're beginning to sound like the other one in there. Tell me, will you start screaming too to try and get my attention?"

 _I will if it works._

"It won't."

It wasn't long before Sora's curiosity led her up the stairway, with Donald and Goofy closely following behind. And the moment she made her way onto the mezzanine, Sora caught sight of Kairi's body and gasped.

"Kairi!" Sora ran to her and urgently shook Kairi's shoulders, dropping the broken sword as she did, and called out her name again and again. One hand flew to her wrist to check for a pulse. "Kairi, open your eyes!"

And Kairi did.

She gave Sora a desperate grimace as her eyelids trembled, as if merely keeping her eyes open took all her strength, and Riku saw her lips begin to try and shape words. Sora angled her ear close to try and hear, and looked back down at her again when it seemed she couldn't hear her.

 _Wait a minute,_ he thought. Kairi wasn't crying this time. She looked almost fearful when she looked at Sora now, but she wasn't shying away. Was she unable to? Or did she not want to?

And what was she trying to say?

"What are you trying to tell me?" Sora asked, unknowingly voicing Riku's thought aloud. "Can you not talk?"

"I think she might've lost the ability, Sora," Goofy supplied with a hand on her shoulder.

"The dog is right," Ansem spoke from his perch. The trio swiveled their heads to look up at him, and Riku could see Kairi fixing him with a fierce glare. It was downright intimidating, even in her state. Riku felt bitterly ashamed. "But it extends far beyond that. Miss Kairi here has lost her Heart, she cannot do anything at all without you close. Even such a simple matter as opening her eyes must be a colossal task, never mind speaking."

Sora glanced back down at her again. "And…when I'm not here?"

"Then she is as good as dead to the world."

"Dead to the world," He could see Sora's hands tighten at this as she bit her lip. Kairi was still trying to tell her something. "How do I fix it?"

In that moment, Riku realized what Kairi was trying to say was a single word mouthed desperately over and over again— _Run_.

"It's quite simple, really," Ansem replied with a grin and leapt off of the top of the archway. As he floated down to the rubble below, Ansem said, "All you need to do is open your Heart to the Darkness and allow her Heart to help lead us into everlasting night."

He began to stride towards her with that grin so wide now that Riku could feel it contorting his features just slightly, making him into something monstrous. And as Ansem reached out his hand as he got closer all Riku could say was _No NO ANSEM STOP—_

He felt it before he saw it: With hardly any warning beyond the sound of crackling, Sora had gotten to her feet and used the broken toy sword to fire off a fire spell faster than almost any Riku had ever seen, enough to come close to matching the speed with which Ansem and Maleficent had fought in their duel. Ansem himself barely caught it in time, and Riku could see him inspecting his hand and the exposed bright red flesh underneath the Dark armor that was now growing back to obscure his hand again. His grin bowed into a grimace as he growled.

Sora even looked a little surprised at herself, but she continued to brandish the broken sword at the ready. Its end looked as though it would snap off any second, and dangled by one lone fiber towards the floor.

"I don't know what you're trying to accomplish here, Riku," She said, "But Darkness isn't the answer to helping Kairi. I know it isn't."

"Oh really?" Ansem bit out. Riku could feel his other hand start to tingle as Ansem gathered magic to it like the building of a storm, and fear writhed in his Heart. He began to scream out as many obscenities as he could think of inside Ansem's head to stop him from the Dark fire spell he was about to retaliate with, to no avail.

"Foolish girl."

And with that, Ansem cast the magic.

Time felt as though it slowed to a crawl as Riku watched it creep closer and closer, and his screaming died down to a horrified silence as he watched Sora die. That is, until she didn't.

For in the last possible second, both Donald and Goofy had leapt in front of her and Kairi. Goofy with his shield raised, and Donald with his staff roiling with a sparkling swirl of magic—he had cast a shield spell to protect them all. The Dark fire fizzled harmlessly against the force field and dissipated.

Riku suddenly liked those two a bit better than he had before.

"How's that for a 'barnyard animal'?" Donald jeered.

Ansem had nearly lost his temper at that; Riku could _feel_ it with how the rage bled into him, making him inexplicably angry as well for a moment. Until Ansem collected himself and lowered his arm.

"What's this?" He asked in a voice far too calm. "The little king's jesters are back at it again?"

"We ain't jesters," Goofy corrected. "My name is Goofy, Captain of the Royal Guard for King Mickey!"

"And I'm Donald Duck," Donald added. "Royal Magician and the Royal Assistant to King Mickey! We're not jesters, and we're most certainly not 'barnyard animals', thank you very much!"

Ansem barked out a solitary laugh. "I thought the little king's fools were supposed to be following the boy. Don't you see my keyblade?" Ansem called the Kingdom Key to his reach, and this time was the slowest yet for it to appear. Riku could feel its scorching heat burn his hand even more, and he could tell Ansem was feeling it too. Around his neck, the necklace was like a lead weight. "Would you betray your king?"

"Not on your life!" Goofy declared. "But I ain't gonna betray Sora either!"

"Yeah," Donald chimed in. He raised his staff again as it began to crackle around the edges. "She's become one of our best friends after all we've been through together!"

"I—Oh gosh, you guys," Sora lowered her head to hide her smile, and Riku wished he could see it more than anything else right then. He realized with a start that the last time he had seen her smile at all was in Monstro. And the last time he had heard Sora laugh was in Traverse Town. Both instances felt like they had taken place a lifetime ago. "Thank you."

"You're welcome! Hey, uh, Donald?" Goofy inquired, without taking his eyes off of Ansem. His shield was still raised.

"What?"

"Could you remind me later to tell the king I'm really sorry for not followin' his order?"

"Sure. We'll tell him together!"

"Let me help you with that," Ansem snapped a finger, and in the distance Riku could hear a rumbling begin. "All the worlds will crumble to the Dark soon enough. You can apologize to your regent as heartless!"

A gesture with his hand, and Ansem sent Donald and Goofy flying off of the mezzanine to the floor down below. Sora ran to the railing just as the first few heartless were beginning to burst into the hall, and Donald and Goofy were trying to make their way back up the stairs.

"Help Beast hold off the heartless, you guys!" She pointed, and at their confused looks towards Ansem she added, "I've fought Riku a million times before, I can handle it! Beast's gonna need your help more fending those things off!"

 _You're not fighting me this time, Sora,_ Riku thought with terror. _You're fighting something that managed to kill Maleficent. This isn't just another spar!_

"A spar, hmm?" Ansem remarked. In the corner of his eye, Riku could see Kairi struggling madly against something. "An excellent idea. Just you against me, no sycophants allowed."

"Yeah, one on one," Sora replied as she brandished the broken sword again. Around her, the shield spell lowered itself. "Like old times."

As Riku fearfully watched the shield spell disintegrate, he knew Ansem was scrutinizing the broken toy sword.

"Ironic, isn't it?" He asked. "It seems even the king's fools don't care for the keyblade as much as the boy did."

Sora lowered the toy sword just slightly as her eyes widened. "Wait a minute," She began. "You mentioned the keyblade again earlier, too! Right before I went off to fight Maleficent's dragon thing! I," She looked behind her at the mess of heartless now beginning to crash into the room, and at Donald, Goofy, and The Beast's efforts to fend them off.

Sora slowly shook her head and looked back at him with pure disbelief.

"You've got to be kidding me, Riku. Is _that_ really what all of this has been about? Your awful attitude this whole time, stealing Kairi away, working with Maleficent, and whatever you've done to yourself now to make yourself talk like a horror movie? You tossed aside everything _just for the keyblade?!_ " Her voice grew to nearly a shout as she lowered the broken toy sword even more with her indignation. "Riku, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life, and I heard you claim you had nothing to fear from the heartless."

 _You're right. That was pretty dumb of me._

Ansem scoffed at her. "To someone with such a pathetic Heart it may seem that way—"

"Not done yet!" Sora interjected as she held up a finger. "Fine. Sure. Maybe you're right, and my Heart is pretty weak. 'Cause I wasn't good enough to keep the keyblade, right? But that's okay. That wasn't my decision, that was the keyblade's, and I'm going to trust that it knows what's best for itself even if it decided on you. But you know what _my_ decision was?"

"Pray tell," Ansem said with palpable amusement.

"I decided to open my Heart to my friends," She said, ignoring Ansem's guffaw at this. "And they've decided to open their Hearts to mine. My Heart is weak, but it's not alone. Nobody is supposed to be truly alone, Riku. That's not how people work. People are supposed to work together and open our Hearts to each other, and that's how we become a part of something greater than ourselves. That's how our Hearts become one."

Sora extended a hand towards him.

And she said, "I don't need a keyblade, Riku. And neither do you. Because we're people, and that means working together is our power. That our friends are our power."

Together.

 _(A girl thinks back to the first night she woke up on this journey, in a foreign land with foreign people and a key to destiny at her side. And she remembers a friend who said, "We may have lost the house that we lived in, and we may have lost our world, but we still had the family we made. We were still able to come_ together _to rebuild the home we had here, in Traverse Town, along with everyone else that found themselves here.")_

 _(A boy, a familiar spirit in familiar skin stretched to the breaking point over a foe whose Darkness reached out to encircle entire worlds, thought back to a promise almost as old as he and the girl were, made under countless shooting stars—United, they could handle anything. Nobody and nothing could defeat them. And that was a fact of life, like how the sky is blue, grass is green, and Sora and Riku were unbeatable when they were_ together _.)_

 _(And a Princess, struggling against the chains of memories in motion to repeat themselves, thought back to a grandmother's tale she held close. A story that ended along the lines of, "But that Darkness wasn't perfect. Even in the worst parts of it there were still fragments of Light in the Hearts of kids like you and me. And those kids managed to find a way to rebuild a facsimile of that first great Light that was swallowed by that Darkness by piecing together those small fragments into something greater. By working_ together _.")_

"Together," Riku murmured, before Ansem quickly held a hand to his mouth. What just happened?

He felt it before he saw it—Like a static energy in the air that made every cell in his body hum, and judging by the look in her eye Riku knew Sora was feeling it too. He was sure Kairi could feel the charge as well.

The next thing he felt was that Ansem's hand had gone inexplicably light, and the burning was gone. The necklace was now noticeably heavier, and he could feel the hand that had darted to his mouth skimmed down to clutch at the crown pendant with confusion. It was becoming heavier still, yet by all appearances stayed the same. Ansem's neck bowed slightly.

But the first thing Riku _saw_ , however, was Light.

It came from Sora's other hand, the one still holding onto the broken sword, and they watched as the pieces became a blinding silhouette that Lit up the whole room for an instant. A silhouette shaped exactly like the Kingdom Key took shape, and Riku could hear the roiling heartless in the rest of the room go slightly quieter for several seconds.

It wasn't long before the Light abated, and it was revealed that the keyblade had indeed returned to her hand. Sora let out a quick, joyous laugh.

"You're back!" She cried as she summoned it from hand to hand. "Wow, I missed you so much, I—" Sora's eyes landed on Ansem again, and she hurriedly straightened herself and turned her nose at him as she dismissed the keyblade with some unwillingness. "Anyways, I mean what I said. I don't need a keyblade. I can do without for this spar, I'll find a pipe or something."

He could feel Ansem grinding his jaw as the Dark keyblade sprung to his hold. Her jaw went slack as she saw it.

"It is a pity I couldn't defeat you with your supposedly former keyblade," Ansem said. "It would have been poetry. But I once told a certain fairy that it's always good to have a spare."

"Is that...?"

"Yes. A keyblade. But unlike yours, this one holds the power to unlock Hearts. And that is only the beginning. Allow me to demonstrate," Riku felt sick for a moment as Ansem swept the keyblade through the air as Sora flinched, and he screamed again for him to stop.

He could feel the edges of his face wrinkle into a sickening smirk as Ansem merely hovered the tip of the keyblade over her Heart, and as he did Riku could feel a great pulse squeeze the air around them. Sora grabbed desperately at her chest as her face went white, and she fell to her knees.

"What's," She coughed. Riku could see small beads of sweat begin to form on Kairi's forehead as she continued to struggle. "What's happening?"

"The foolish boy told us exactly where the last Princess' Heart hid. I must say, it was an excellent party trick. One I certainly wouldn't have thought of myself, though the end result was predictable enough."

Was that why Maleficent and Ansem had laughed at him? _What are you talking about?_

"Somehow, somewhere along the way," Ansem explained, "A certain misguided master cast a spell that no doubt ensured countless instances of good fortune for Miss Kairi: A new home when her own was destroyed. New friends that would protect her when the time came. And culminating with a new Heart to hide away in, when her own was in danger."

 _Oh, no._

"Make some sense already," Sora choked out. The air continued to pulse, and she groaned.

"Don't you understand yet?" He teased. "The Princess' Heart is inside your own. Miss Kairi is here with us not only in body, but in spirit."

"'Princess'? 'Miss' Kairi? Riku, why do you keep—" Sora whipped her head around at something grabbing her ankle, and Ansem angled his head to look as well.

It was Kairi. Her skin had gone blanched and clammy, and she gave Sora that frantic look again.

She mouthed the words, _Not Riku._

Riku felt it when Ansem reared back his hand. When he angled that Dark keyblade at just the right angle mid-swing to ensure the worst while Sora was distracted. And Riku felt a sharp sting of fear as he heard its teeth cut through the air with a hollow _whoop!_

 _Ansem ANSEM STOP IT NO ANSEM DON'T DO THIS I SWEAR I'LL DESTROY YOU MYSELF I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU—_

And he felt the clash reverberate through his bones as the Dark keyblade collided with the Kingdom Key.

"I don't know who you are, but there's no way you're taking anyone's Heart today! Not Kairi's, not Riku's, and not mine!" She snapped, and with a burst of strength Riku didn't know she had Sora forced away Ansem's keyblade, the blade of which slid against her own with a metallic screech and a burst of sparks.

They began to circle each other as the din from the heartless below the mezzanine grew to a fevered pitch. Riku could hear The Beast roar once more as the ground shook below their feet. Behind them all, the archway roiled with unearthly light.

"Oh, but I am," Ansem replied. "Darkness will prevail as the Light expires, and I must do my part to ensure it. But I did forget my manners, didn't I? Please forgive my faux pas. Allow me to introduce myself," he began.

Ansem inclined his head slightly in an abbreviated bow as his mouth twisted into a vicious grin. "I've gone by a variety of names. But you may call me Ansem, Seeker of Darkness."

* * *

 **KAIRI**

It was the most brutal fight she'd ever seen between them.

She knew it wasn't truly Riku who was fighting against Sora—the Hearts and the outfit reminded her well enough—but it was hard to separate the image of Sora fighting against Ansem when he wore Riku's face from a time when the three kids were innocent to the notions of keyblades and other worlds beyond their own.

Kairi wished they could return to those times now, but she knew they never would be able to again.

For even if a miracle happened and Kairi returned to herself entirely, and Riku had gotten his body and Heart back, and Sora didn't get herself killed in the meanwhile, it wouldn't change the fact of what had happened. And that was, Kairi thought, perhaps the biggest loss in all of this.

The ground shook again, and she pulled her limbs in as close as she could. Which, admittedly, wasn't very close at all. It felt like she was reliving the worst moment of her life all over again.

 _It wasn't long after Ansem had placed her in front of the incomplete keyhole that Kairi remembered that final day of Radiant Garden in full._

 _Compared to all the others, the flashbacks of that day in particular hadn't been marked by sadness or panic or any emotional response whatsoever. Perhaps it was shock that caused that and tears would come later. Kairi wasn't sure. But what she was sure of was the odd feeling of acceptance at the events of that day. Because remembering what she did about the apprentices, their experiments, the gradually fewer and fewer encounters with the king, the continual tampering with her memories of her family and Apprentice Xehanort…it was inevitable that such things would come to a head one way or another._

 _Apprentice Xehanort. Ansem._

" _But he had another name before those, didn't he?" Kairi continued to wind and unwind the chain of her necklace around her fingertip and watched it change colors. "Before he threw me through that portal, that one-eyed man called him something else. Terra."_

 _(It was the second she said this that Sora would come close enough for Kairi to find herself in her body again, this time for good, though Kairi did not know it yet. But in that white room, in that strange place somewhere between real and unreal within a Heart with room for love and room to spare, a boy slept on a pale throne.)_

 _(And if Kairi had stayed for even a moment longer, if Sora had been reluctant to run to a foe who wore the face of a friend, she would have seen the sleeping boy's hand twitch at the sound of that name.)_

Sparks flew again as their keyblades collided, and she knew the fight would be decided soon. Sora's arms were beginning to tremble with the onslaught, and even Ansem's back bowing slightly, like he was struggling under the weight of something. Kairi wondered if he hadn't come out quite as unscathed from the fight against Maleficent as he'd claimed.

Another _CLANG!_ More sparks. This time Sora braced her keyblade as best she could against Ansem's as she leaned in close to tell him something. Against the subsiding rumbling of the heartless from behind and Beast's roaring, and Donald's shouts of spells left and right, Kairi couldn't hear a word that she was saying to him. But judging from Ansem's Hearts, watching in particular the frenzy of one with a lone star of Light, Sora was trying to talk to Riku.

The Heart flickered and its Light began to rise. From a lone star in the midnight sky, to the steady glow of a candle in a Dark room. Which was soon joined by another candle. And another.

Riku's Light was coming back at last.

In that instant, Ansem had slipped. Just for an instant, and yet it was enough.

Sora's keyblade slid down the side of the Dark keyblade's shaft and caught the edge of its Heart-shaped tooth with its own. And in one movement, Sora twisted herself around and kicked Ansem away as she reached out her arms as far as possible to yank his keyblade out of his slackened grip with hers.

Ansem fell to the ground as the Dark keyblade sailed across the mezzanine, and Sora nearly dived after it. She pinned it to the ground underfoot as she pointed her keyblade at him in ready, but Ansem didn't get back up. Instead, he curled in on himself with one hand trying to tear away the necklace as the other grabbed at his head.

She looked between the Dark keyblade, and the archway before cautiously walking forwards and aiming her keyblade straight towards the still-roiling archway. Nothing happened.

By now the heartless' din had completely quieted and Sora spared Ansem one more glance as she ran to the stairway to call out to Donald and Goofy, who were by now making their way over. "Guys, Riku—Ansem, whatever, I think he's finished. What do we do about that thing?" She gestured at the archway. "He said it was a keyhole but that it was incomplete, I tried using the keyblade on it to seal it before he gets up again, but nothing happened."

"Well, uh. Hmm," Goofy looked a little worse for wear as he tapped a finger against his chin. "I guess you can only lock the keyhole if it's complete?"

"How do we complete it, then?" Donald asked.

"He said something about needing Kairi's Heart for it—Oh, _crap!_ " Sora whipped around to look at her, obviously having just remembered her predicament. "Kairi!"

Kairi tried her best to wave but only managed a small twitch of her wrist. Sora's eyes followed it. In the background, Ansem angrily muttered something to himself, but nobody else seemed to notice.

"You guys, what do we do?" Sora dismissed her keyblade and drew closer. "I can't just leave her like this, she can't do anything. She needs our help."

"Back in Neverland, ya told us she was missing her Heart, right?" Goofy replied. "So maybe we just gotta find it and give it back."

"That Ansem dude told me I already had Kairi's Heart inside mine somehow," She crossed her arms. "But how do we get it out? I don't know of any ways to…oh."

Sora turned back towards the Dark keyblade lying forgotten in the corner.

"Sora?"

Kairi's Heart started pounding as she realized exactly what it was Sora was planning to do. No. No, no, no, no, _no,_ she thought, _Sora, stop. STOP._

She walked towards the keyblade, and its blue-black sheen reflected the hellish light of the keyhole. She picked it up.

"Sora, hold on!"

"Sora, wait!"

Kairi did everything to get her attention, then: She struggled to sit upright, to wave her arms, anything. She formed the shape of words like _no_ and _stop_ and _please, Sora._ But she continued to look at the keyblade with a face that was unreadable.

At last, Sora turned back towards them with one last smile. As Kairi began to cry, Sora's eyes fell on her.

"No frowning, no sad faces," Sora told her. " _Highwind_ runs on happy faces, Kairi. Okay?"

 _Don't be a hero, Sora. Please, don't be afraid to lose this time. Please. I don't need myself back that badly!_

Another tear fell down the side of her face, and Sora winced.

"I'm sorry, Kairi. I really am," It was that final night in the gummi ship all over again. "But it has to be me."

And with that, Sora pointed the Dark keyblade at herself and pierced it through her chest.

Her body dissolved into Light as Kairi's came back to life, and two bright Hearts flew out of Sora's remains. Kairi could feel every finger, every toe respond in full, her arms and legs scrambling to have her stand upright in a way she hasn't managed in a month, the way her hands stretched in vain to try and capture every little particle of Light to try and do something she wasn't sure of. Hold it close? Try and put Sora back together like tiny little puzzle pieces? Kairi didn't know, but she knew she had to do something.

Donald and Goofy were yelling, but Kairi wasn't listening. She was too distracted with the solidness of the ground under her feet, the tensing of her muscles. The remaining gleams of Light, of _Sora,_ spiraling towards the ceiling like sparks off of a campfire. It was only when she heard a sobbing scream that she turned her head.

It was Riku.

"NO-O- _O! SORA!_ " His voice was normal now, with no odd duality like it had before. He struggled against himself, and Kairi could see his Hearts beginning to riot. He wrenched against the necklace enough to where Kairi was worried he might break the chain, and she couldn't tell whether it was Riku doing that, or Ansem. His voice changed again and again, alternating between Riku's and Ansem's. "SORA, I'M—You insolent _wretch!_ How dare you—"

The keyhole stirred to life, and Kairi could see the smear of colors across its visage organize themselves into an indecipherable pattern. The naked bolts of electricity on either side crackled far louder than before, and the ground began to rumble once more. Riku and Ansem, and whoever else was in there, continued to struggle. Kairi, Donald, and Goofy

"KAIRI, RUN! HE'S PLANNING TO—This damnation of a necklace— _PLEASE!_ "

Ansem pulled against the chain hard enough that Kairi was sure he was choking himself, and with a strangled victorious cry he undid the clasp and hurled the necklace somewhere into the room off of the mezzanine. With the removal of the necklace, Kairi could see his body overtaken with Darkness as a strange glow took shape in front of him. Something was pulling at her hand.

It was Donald. "He's right, we've got to hurry!"

She took several steps to follow him and Goofy down the steps, and looked back again. The Darkness had subsided to reveal a man with tanned skin and white hair rubbing a gloved hand around his neck, staring with bewilderment at the glowing Light was revealed to be Riku, luminous and transparent, trying to hold him back.

"Riku?!"

He looked away from the glowing Hearts sailing through the air to the still-trapped Princesses of Heart back to her. He was crying.

"Kairi, I'm sorry," Riku wept. "I'm so sorry. About everything. Please, go. Run."

There was countless things she wanted to say to him at that moment, fueled by weeks-old bitterness and anger, but Kairi knew this wasn't the time. There might not ever be the time again. She exhaled and gave a nod, before running down the staircase without looking back. Behind her, Ansem had begun to laugh, a jeering chuckle that rose to a bellowing howl that echoed around the ceiling. She reached the last steps and ran to follow Donald and Goofy, and saw The Beast use his claws to free the now-awakened Princesses from their prisons. Maleficent's enchantment on them had lifted.

"Like master, like pupil!" Ansem mocked. "The apple really doesn't fall far from the tree, does it?"

"Shut up!"

Ansem laughed again. "Your body submits. Your Heart is mine. And yet your mind resists! It's quite a shame you don't have a suit of armor to call your own or else I'd actually consider you a threat, boy!"

Kairi felt something catch against her shoe and she looked down. It was the necklace. She picked it up and ran.

The rest of the way was a blur of running so fast she could feel a stitch in her side begin to form, and the ever-present rumbling throughout the entire citadel now. The moon was high up in the sky as Goofy frightfully raced to unlatch the gummi ship's door just as the first few heartless began to enter the room, and Kairi could already see several come close to the trio in the corner of her eye. Something clawed at her, pulling at the hem of her shirt like a child trying to get attention, but Kairi batted it away. They leapt inside the instant the door was opened, and Kairi squeezed her eyes shut with the effort of wrenching the door shut against the slew of heartless as Donald sprinted to turn the gummi ship on.

The engine powered on just as she was able to close the door, and Kairi took a moment to catch her breath and lean against the wall. She thought she saw something move out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned to look nothing was there. Kairi chalked it up to Goofy probably making his way to the cockpit to follow Donald.

She sank into the remaining chair—Sora's chair, Kairi knew—and nobody spoke as Donald carefully turned the ship in the ruined chapel against the heartless trying to climb up onto the hull. He turned the wipers on high as the gummi ship rose off of the floor and out of the gaping wall, and heartless fell away like Dark rain in the night.

The gummi ship circled the upper spires of the citadel to gain altitude, and Kairi could see where Sora had used the ship in her fight against Maleficent at one section of overturned spires and wrecked rooftops. The Dark smear that was supposed to be at the base of the building was now gone, and Kairi didn't let herself think about it. The gummi ship rose into the night sky.

Away from Riku, wreathed with a Light that had returned to him at last.

Away from Sora, who told her _'no sad faces'_ , advice Kairi couldn't follow now if she tried.

And finally, away from her home.

* * *

 **RIKU**

When Kairi and the others made it out, he sank to the floor. Riku didn't listen to Ansem's continued scorn, or the rumbling, or anything.

All he wanted was to see Sora, but Riku knew he'd never have that again.

So instead, he wished to dissolve into the floor. Like Sora dissolving into the air, let him dissolve into the earth, Riku figured. Straight to the bowels of whatever hell was out there. It was what he deserved.

Riku got his wish. His eyes closed to the final sight of the keyhole and approaching waves of heartless, and Riku could feel himself falling.

And falling.

And falling.

 _("Because that's what people like you and me end up as, Riku, alone. There is nobody to love us, nobody to tell us things are going to be okay, because_ we are unlovable. _All we are is poison.")_

He didn't try to quiet that memory this time. Not when it turned out to be a prophecy.

She was right. She had been right all along, and Riku was stupid enough to not listen. And now Riku had ended up as everything he hated in the people he hated most.

 _(Riku was afraid of being anyone else other than Riku. And he was afraid of being anything else other than good. Such were the two things he was afraid of most of all.)_

 _What have I done?_

He was no hero. He was just another one of the bad guys.

Riku continued to fall, and he closed his eyes. And somewhere along the way, without his realizing it, Riku passed out.

The next time he opened his eyes, Riku was no longer falling through that Dark abyss. Instead, he was somewhere familiar, but he couldn't remember ever being here before.

And then he realized with a start—the dreams. The dreams that he'd had so long ago, of opening the door on the play island and finding himself anywhere he could and couldn't imagine. Riku had landed in one of those places now.

In particular, the barren place with rocks that glowed from their fissures, where mist filled the spaces in between. Those rocks were the only light around. Except for the small glowing light one woman held in her hand as she watched him alongside a small cartoonish mouse.

"He's awake!" The mouse exclaimed. His voice was as odd as Donald's and Goofy's, though much more decipherable than the former's. He wore an outfit made of reds and yellows and black, with blue straps interwoven around the garments. There were two bright golden buttons on his shirt, and his ears were shaped like circles. Riku looked to the woman next.

The first thing he noticed was that she was the subject of one of the portraits in his stained-glass platform from the dream, where the Voice had told him he was not worthy. But she looked different—her startlingly blue hair was beginning to go white at the tips, making for a gradient that climbed towards her roots. Her clothes looked as though they had been finely made and flattering, once, but the billowed sleeves and skirts were now tattered and turning black. But the most worrying about her, Riku thought, was not the color of her hair or the state of her clothes. It was her skin.

It was beginning to turn a purpling dark tone towards her arms and legs, with her fingertips looking as though they were barely beginning to go red. Riku wasn't sure. When the woman figured out he was staring at them, she self-consciously closed the hand that was holding the little magical light and hid the other behind herself. Riku turned his head and tried his best to pretend as though he hadn't been looking.

"Where am I?" He asked. "Who are you guys? I'm Riku, by the way," He added swiftly. "Sorry."

"Gosh, so you're the one I've been trying to contact!" The mouse cheered. "It's a good thing we found you first. You can call me Mickey!"

"You've been trying to contact me?"

"Yep! But your Heart had too much Darkness in it, and it was hard to get through," Mickey said as he gave a slightly worried chuckle and scratched his head. "But that's okay! You're safe with us now."

"Well, that's good," Riku supposed. They didn't look to be dangerous. But then again, he had only just learned that perhaps he wasn't the greatest judge of character. He'd have to be careful. "But where am I? And who are you?" He asked the woman.

"Riku," She hesitated, as if she wasn't sure what to say. Her eyes darted around, but when he looked nothing was there. The woman began, "You're in the Realm of Darkness."

Oh. He really _had_ gotten his wish, didn't he?

"As for who I am," She said as she stood back up, "My name is Master Aqua."

* * *

 **NOTES:**

I'm just gonna get right into the notes since there's a crap load, and you're all probably wondering WTF just happened:

1\. Okay, so you guys are probably primarily wondering WTF am I doing changing around the pivotal scene where Sora gets back his keyblade and Donald and Goofy ditch Riku to go w/ Sora instead of who they're supposed to be with. Here's the thing about that scene—Riku attempts to kill Sora during that scene. No, seriously, watch them closely and think about what Riku's response "We'll see about that" _really means._ He's not even possessed yet, and he's consciously deciding to kill his BFF. It's messed up.

It's even more messed up if you try to swap Sora's gender. I could write a thesis on how same-sex violence is not taken seriously enough and how this leads to the romanticizing of abusive behaviors in LGBT relationships (and by extension, yaoi/yuri material like fanfics, etc) (and how that, in turn, helps perpetuate a lot of residual messed up mentalities amongst those who intake the material and mistakenly try to apply its underlying themes to their own lives and relationships regardless of orientation) but I only have 5000 characters on AO3's A/N section as it is. But anyways the scene gets really weird in a bad way when you try to directly adapt it w/ Sora as a girl and when you consider that Riku's supposed to be one of the protagonists by the end and on top of that, the love interest of the fic!

So, I had to change that whole scenario here, which led to having to logically change a lot of how the rest of the HB storyline plays out. And also why this chapter took so long since I essentially had to rewrite the end level of the game (on top of trying to figure out wtf I was going to do to fix KH3). Hopefully you understand and are willing to forgive me :(

2\. The part that I. Did. Not. Like. About Hollow Bastion in KH1's canon was how everyone was so willing to leave behind a 14-year-old kid in Maleficent's stronghold where a shit ton of heartless were hanging around ALL ALONE! Seriously, even as a little kid when I played the game for the first time I was thinking that. Nobody said shit about that particular little detail! Riku? Sure, I could see him doing it. But you'd think either Donald or Goofy would have raised the concern. So I fixed that here!

3\. So. I know canonically the Mysterious Voice™ from Kingdom Hearts is supposed to be King Mickey talking to Sora (the original Japanese uses 'boku' as the pronoun, which only Mickey uses I believe) but it doesn't come off as that in English. Honestly, I kinda liked the idea of the Voice being Kingdom Hearts itself talking to Sora, which was the idea I had when I was really little. And given that this whole dealio is an exercise in self-indulgence and placating my little me, I decided to retain that thought. (Also, do you know how ridiculously proud I am to finally write the scene for the fic's title drop? It was 6 AM and I had itty bitty tears in my eyes at it you guys. (´•̥̥̥ω•̥̥̥`) Also, I'm not 100% sure if those choices equate to you getting the midday result in-game, so I'll check that eventually.)

4\. In the games, we never really see anyone else's Stations of Awakening beyond Sora/Roxas/Ven/Yours (in KHUX). I have continuously, for years, been incredibly salty about this. I want to see what Riku's Station looked like. I want to see what Kairi's looked like. I want to see Xion's, Axel's, Mickey's, Xehanort's, Eraqus', Terra's, Aqua's, everybody! But we never fucking see them! Ugh. So, I'm gonna fix that. Sorta. I'll properly draw them eventually.

4a. Also, I always kind of wondered 'what if' in the matter of Riku ever maybe having a false Awakening when he stole the KK in-game. But that would also mean he'd have to fall asleep first, and Riku's not necessarily the napping type like Sora is (especially with how shit was going down in-game at that time). So I kinda had to engineer circumstances so he'd pass the heck out and I could finagle in my precious false Awakening and torture Riku a little bit. More than a little bit, really.

5\. Friendly reminder that it is honest to god canon that Kairi was a subject of experimentation by the apprentices! It's mentioned only in short snippets (maybe two at the most? I think?) in the KH2 novel, but they were specifically said to have put her into some sort of observation tank. You could totally argue that the apprentices only ever did observation-type protocols with her, but one point of interest about her that the apprentices were written as being intrigued by was how she couldn't make any heartless like their other test subjects. I'm willing to bet that with a Princess of Heart in their midst, the apprentices would be chomping at the bit to try doing experiments a little beyond simple observation.

6\. What is the power of Beckoning? Well, you'll see. It's more so my own invention than anything given concrete indication of existing in canon, but I needed an explanation for why Riku's able to pull a new keyblade out of his ass every other game (both for himself and Kairi). And why Mickey randomly got a new keyblade in KH3. And why Lea got a keyblade at all…yeah.

7\. (on the matter of Maleficent not having a Heart in this fic) This part isn't actually canon, I just based my own ideas off of canon's implications (and real-world lore in this case). Maleficent doesn't turn into a heartless in KH1 when her Heart falls to the Darkness mostly because Nomura/etc wanted to put in her badass dragon form, which I don't blame them for at all, but it does kinda go against the established explanation at that point for the KoPH's abilities and what happens when one's Heart is opened to the Darkness (aka, they become heartless). So in real-world lore about fairies, the thing is that fairies don't have souls. Souls seem to be synonymous with Hearts in the KH series, so I basically transferred over the line of thought here.

7a. It feels like such a travesty that I had to reduce the fate-deciding fight between Ansem!Riku and Maleficent down to 225 words and make it off-screen, to add insult to injury. I had to keep the wordcount to a semi-respectable number, but the real reason is that I just don't feel confident that I can tackle something that requires that much gravitas and chutzpah in one go. I promise one day I will actually bother to write out the whole thing in all its glory. It'll be like the Ministry of Magic fight between Dumbledore Vs. Voldemort, but obviously it'd probably be more accurately described as Voldemort Vs. Voldemort ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

8\. Yeah so uhhhh… the whole night = Darkness = heartless going screwier than usual doesn't have any explicit basis in canon, but all areas we see in the Realm of Darkness are literally dark/at night, with rare exceptions (like the then-fallen DI's appearance in 2.8) (which is interesting that they kept that portion lit up like daytime) so I just kind of made that conjecture. Also I did it because I just kind of thought it'd be badass for Maleficent to literally be able to keep the sun in the sky and to help sustain tension/mystery about Hollow Bastion

9\. The Jolly Holiday Bakery Café is an actual bakery located in Disneyland in Anaheim, CA.

10\. Yep. I made Axel/Lea and Kairi siblings. Mostly because it helped retroactively give Lea and Isa a plausible reason to go snooping around the RG castle in the first place and risk injury/getting arrested/etc beyond just ~curiosity~ and because I liked the idea of their dynamic being based on them being siblings instead of this awkwardly way older dude being friends with a 15 year old girl _(that he freakin' kidnapped)_ in KH3. So I made Kairi an oopsie baby (10 year age gap between siblings, woo!) and made them family. And yeah, 90% of the reason why I went with this choice is because they have the same hair color. I am very transparent ヽ( ᐛ )ﾉ (and yeah, Lea/Isa is going to be a thing eventually, but I didn't bother tagging it in the relationships cuz I have a pet peeve about people tagging relationships that aren't given any focus in the story and happen offscreen)

10a. One very important thing to keep in mind w/ Kairi's flashbacks—THEY ARE NOT IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER! Kairi's remembering bits and pieces of what had happened in accordance with what she sees around her in Sora's eyes, which wouldn't necessarily lead to the most orderly of storytelling. I promise I will slowly explain everything that went on in chronological order (whether in the story itself or in author's notes) with Your Adventure Begins in the Dead of Night, the next installment of the series.

11\. Current tally of people that realize Sora and Riku have feelings for each other: 4 (This number will go up)

12\. Number of people who have told Maleficent to shut up and got away with it: 1 (this number will not go up)

13\. Yeah, that's like the only time Donald's ever gonna cast a healing spell on Sora lol (I did say I was going to try and be as accurate to the games as I could, didn't I?)

14\. "Within the span of minutes"-This is why I had the prologue and the first chapter count down to the fall of destiny islands—not just for an extra little dramatic flair and to keep mental note of the timeline, but also to help show at the end of this fic how fast a world can fall to the Dark at night. Riku's final snippet in Ch.1 started 50 minutes until the end of their world, but by the time Riku and Ansem SoD took its Heart it was around 30-ish minutes until the world fell after its Heart did. Maleficent would have had next to no time to set up the more complicated magic required to make a world's Heart stay in stasis (so she could effectively conquer that world) while also keeping the heartless (which are basically superpowered and require extremely precise and forceful instruction at night) and their grubby little mitts off of the Heart. And Kairi would have had almost no time to do anything effective with her PoH powers even if she did know how to use them at that point with having to hold off the heartless simultaneously.

14a. And yes, you'll see how Maleficent managed to conquer Hollow Bastion. She's not dead, she's totally fine. Sort of. You know how she comes back in KH2!

15\. Sora comes back too. You'll see (◉◡◉✿)

16\. The story that I have Donald tell Riku in that scene where they're first tagging along is a retelling of the first episode of A Mickey Mouse Cartoon. It's a cute little series, you should check it out (it's free on YouTube). Oh, btw in the story that Donald is telling King Mickey wasn't a king yet. He just calls him 'the king' there to give respect to his current position. Wernher von Goof is an actual relative of Goofy's that appears in Disney's Goof Troop, a cousin to be precise. Yeah, he's supposed to be a Goofy-species(?) pastiche of Wernher von Braun the rocket scientist, but I figured it'd be funny to make this presumably crazy-smart cookie run a hot dog stand instead. Maybe he uses rocket fuel to heat up the grill he cooks hot dogs with.

17\. There's a theory that one of the reasons that Riku said yes to opening the door and giving himself to the Darkness in KH1 is because Ansem SoD felt familiar to him—because Terra's Heart was also with Ansem SoD then, as the guardian heartless. I liked that idea, and felt that Ansem SoD would take advantage of Riku sensing Terra within him, maybe even pretending to be him if push ever came to shove. Maleficent might be reluctant to lie in my fic, but Ansem SoD sure isn't. ʖ

18\. Nomura never really did bother to explain where Tidus' scar in his KH design came from, did he? The explanation honestly wrote itself in there.

19\. For Belle, I know in-game she wears the ballgown (presumably to keep her immediately recognizable since in promotional material she's wearing it 90% of the time), but I had to keep it internally consistent since with the point in the movie I'm referencing where Maleficent took her, Belle wears the described outfit.

20\. All that KH3 crap about that weird replica Riku in Org13 that Nomura had decided to ditch the perfectly logical explanation for being there and instead was a replica of a replica? Not in my fic, nosiree! It felt absurdly contrived and like Nomura just wanted to make shit more complicated than it already was for no good reason. So the KH1 Riku you'll see in KH3 in my fic is time-traveling Ansem!Riku. Because time traveling is the exact limit of bullshittery I am willing to put up with.

21\. Yeah, I know vultures don't actually make birdsong (frankly they sound like pterodactyls or whatever dinosaur they're descended from) but just let me be all poetic and artsy-fartsy mmkay (๑•́ω•̀๑)

22\. In the Ansem!Riku fight, if you're dumb enough to try and sling a fire spell at him like I was the first time, you very quickly learn he redirects it back at you as a Dark fire spell. It hurts. A lot. If you git gud, you can time it so that you can turn it back at him. But I never bothered to learn _(:3」∠)_ so I referenced that here.

23\. If you noticed in that one scene...By the time this fic series ends, I'm going to make sure Sora gets keyblade armor one way or another ∠( ᐛ ｣ ∠)_ And Riku.


	13. Chapter 12: Home of the Heartless, Pt2

I AM SO SORRY. I have no excuses except that this turned out to be a lot lot lot more work than I thought as well ( ; ᴗ ; ) So instead I shall once more offer reparations...in the form of a 63.5k long chapter! As always, chapter notes will be at the bottom and in comments. I love you all (´•̥̥̥ω•̥̥̥`)

 **EDIT:** Just be forewarned that this chapter is going to undergo a looooot of revisions before I start the next fic. Like, it's item 1 on my to-do list. I'm sorry! A 64k wordcount is absurd in a bad way, so I gotta break it in half into two chapters. (and I only just figured out 2/3rds of this series' ending _and_ how to get there...which means I gotta make sure the events here comply with the 'laws' of the AU I've set up, cuz god knows the canon KH universe effectively has no laws beyond rule of cool) (But worry not! The end product of this chap. will remain the 'retelling' of KH1's final level/boss events that it is and not change too much, I'm just giving it the care and attention it deserves)

* * *

 **?**

 _Day One_

Somewhere just outside the Realms of Light and Dark—yet not outside of their reach—stood a realm of its own kind.

The Realm of In Between.

It was a strange place, with stranger people. For it was a realm that tiptoed within and without the matters of Light and Dark and could never quite decide which to choose, or whether to bother with choosing at all. Some parts of it considered the Light a friend, though distant, greeting it _Hello_ and _How are you_ every so often and exchanging pleasantries before going their separate ways. And other parts wove alongside and away from the Dark, sharing a hideous underside for a moment before splitting apart enough to make one wonder whether they were ever connected at all.

As for the people of this realm…well. It would be both truth and untruth to say all of the Realm Between's inhabitants were just like anyone else. For a number of them were indeed ordinary folk, most notably those who lived on the side of the realm closest to the Light, with all the same miscellanea of dreams and Hearts and thoughts of weekends and summer vacations like any of us would have. But for the other half stained with shades of the Dark, the half littered with silent cities whose only occupants were rainclouds and the neon glare of signs that led to nowhere, strange husks of people disappeared as fast as they arrived.

And one of those husks, in the form of a boy with a blond upsweep of hair, opened his eyes.

He wasn't sure where he was. And he wasn't sure if he cared to find out. All the boy saw around him to one side was a dirt path littered with trees, and he squinted against the great pillars of light thrown down by the setting sun. On the other side was the locked wall of a gate, past which he could see a lavish building of some sort that was clearly abandoned.

The boy turned at the sight of something Dark forming in front of him, and saw that it was a hole of some sort. He guessed he should have been shocked by the sight, before realizing that he wasn't quite sure what 'shocked' was supposed to be at all. He didn't know where the word had come from, and he couldn't bring himself to care.

Out of the portal stepped what looked to be a man, with his head covered by a black hood. He walked towards the boy.

"You seek answers," The man said.

The boy wasn't entirely sure if he agreed, but then he wasn't entirely sure if he disagreed either, and that resulted in a half-aborted nod as his only response. Did he want answers? Answers to what? Did it matter?

He only bothered looking up from the grass at the man's feet when he saw a hand wave and strange letters appear in front of him. They were silvery, thin wisps, only able to be seen when they refracted the sun's rays, and it took a moment for the boy to realize they spelled out _SORA._ That word sounded familiar, but the boy did not know why.

"You feel nothing," The man supposed. "This is like a dream to you; Nothing is real."

And the boy supposed that he was right. That certainly appeared to be the most apt descriptor for his current state.

But before he could voice it aloud, the man went on as an 'X' bloomed into view in the middle of the letters, and said, "I can give you purpose. A new name. A new you."

The letters danced around him, slowly, and then faster. And then faster yet.

Before long the letters began to careen to the point where all the boy could see of them was lightning-quick flashes where they caught the sunlight, forming curved smears in midair, though they didn't make a sound. All that he could hear around the two of them was birdsong and a gentle rush from the wind teasing along treetops. The letters began to slow.

Somewhere along their dance the letters had organized themselves into a new arrangement, with the golden 'X' still shining in the middle. Its gilded tinge now spread across the other letters as they united to spell out a new name.

 _ROXAS._

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _Day ?_

The three walked. Riku was not sure for how far, or how long. For time, as Aqua revealed to him in her recounting, was not quite the same in the Realm of Darkness as it was in its Lighter counterpart.

"Ten years?!" He gaped at her. "You've been wandering around down here alone against the heartless for a whole ten years?"

Aqua nodded. Her brows were puckered with stress, and the set to her shoulders was notably rigid. But more than weary, she looked sad. "I didn't even know it until you revealed who you were. This place…it plays tricks on me. I keep seeing things that aren't really there. And it's like I keep hearing the Dark parts of my own thoughts aloud. I don't know what's real anymore, I wasn't even sure you were real for a while."

"Really?"

She nodded again. "Before you woke up, you glowed a bit at first exactly like Terra did when I saw him just minutes ago—or I think it was minutes, for here at least—before me and Ven were grabbed up by these Dark arm-like things," Her breath caught at this, and her expression went even more stoic, if possible. Like she was trying to compensate. "He called forth one of Master Eraqus' spells to fight against the part of himself that fell to the Darkness. I-I didn't even knowhe'd fallen to it, that Xehanort had found his way in—"

Aqua stopped walking and looked down at the ground. Her bangs hid her face from view as her reddened fingertips dug into her arms. Beside her, Mickey drew closer.

"Hey, uh," He supplied uneasily, "Think of it this way—At least you were able to find him! Nobody else has seen him in ages, I was sure worried about him. But now we know he's okay!"

Mickey, Riku noticed, was sometimes a little _too_ invested in improving the morale. Which, he thought to himself, might have made sense here in the Realm of Darkness, but it came at the cost of his somewhat inappropriate response to the tone. And the subject matter.

"How on earth is Terra okay?" He asked with disbelief. "He got possessed by this Xehanort guy."

Just like how Riku did by Ansem, but he did not dare utter the words aloud.

Mickey gave an unsure sound as he scratched his head. "Well, yeah, but he's fighting!" He straightened as he looked to Master Aqua hopefully. "You remember how Terra is, don't you, Aqua? He's strong. He's been fighting the Darkness for as long as you have, even if it found its way in. He's resisting!"

Her fingertips relaxed slightly as she raised her head.

"That's right. I have to resist, too," This time, her arms lowered for good. Master Aqua began to walk once more, and he and Mickey followed. "Let's go. We've got to help you find that keyblade, don't we, Mickey?"

"Right!"

"Hold on," Riku looked between them. Neither of them had mentioned anything about this. "Keyblade?"

"Yep!" Mickey gestured for him to follow as they walked, and continued, "Y'see, not long before I met up with Aqua I found out about a door of some sort that was opened up between the Realm of Light and the Realm of Darkness. I don't know who opened it up, or how, but Master Yen Sid told me it could make for some real trouble for the worlds if we don't close it. That's why I'm here!"

"That reminds me, Mickey," Aqua said from in front, without turning. "How _did_ you get here? Right before we found Riku you were just saying that usually only the heartless and other Dark creatures could find their way down here. Apart from how I ended up here."

Aqua had dodged every attempt Riku and Mickey made to find out what had happened to make her end up here, and her only words on the matter were: _"Not long after Mickey and I last spoke, I took Ven to somewhere safe. And only after that did I go after Terra in hopes of saving him too. It…didn't work out."_

Riku looked down at his hands and absently flexed his fingertips. Aqua obviously hadn't intended to insinuate that he was just another creature of the Darkness to end up in this place, but he didn't bother to correct her. It was true, wasn't it?

 _("I choose glory.")_

Yeah. It was.

He balled his hands into fists and felt his tongue curl with shame in his mouth.

"It's the heartless," Mickey's ears bowed forward slightly with uncharacteristic sadness. "They've been attacking worlds and taking their Hearts. And of course, worlds with no Hearts crumble into Darkness. Master Yen Sid told me that if we can lock that door between the two Realms—Light and Dark—from both sides, we can protect the other worlds and work on figuring out how to restore the ones already lost from there. So that's what this keyblade we need is about," At this, Mickey summoned to his hand his own keyblade, one spangled with stars whose hilt was formed of stylized shooting stars and their trails. At its head, a single tooth formed of a crescent moon nearly encircling a five-point star gleamed. "Mine won't quite cut it for the task. We need the keyblade to the Realm of Darkness to match the one to the Realm of Light. Anything else won't work, it'll be just like when you try to use the wrong key in a lock."

Riku's eyes widened at that.

 _("The keyblade that you bear now has a history of being…unpredictable. It does not help your circumstances that that particular keyblade has a twin.")_

 _Mickey continued on, oblivious. "That's why I'm here. As for how, well, turns out it's not so easy getting into the Realm of Darkness. Only beings like the heartless are able to get around between the realms with any consistency now, since the former points we could cross have become unstable with all that's been going on. There's too much risk of falling into the abyss and losing yourself for good. So the only way me and Master Yen Sid could come up with otherwise was waiting for a chance to sneak in."_

 _"Sneak in?" Aqua asked._

 _"It's only when a world's Heart gets consumed that an entrance to the Realm of Darkness appears. So, I had to uh, sort of fall into this realm along with the rest of the world to get here. I sure feel bad knowing it took a sacrifice like that to do my part."_

 _"You did what you could," She replied. Her tone didn't make it clear whether she was trying to console Mickey with that, or herself. "You did what you had to do."_

 _They continued to talk, but Riku sank further into himself at the crippling shame._ _You did what you could. You did what you had to do._

 _He hadn't told them how he'd gotten here. He hadn't said anything about what he'd done—the sacrifices he'd forced others to make instead. All Riku had told them, upon asking, was_ _"I messed up."_ _And that was that._

 _Now Riku was only just discovering that he may have messed up far worse than he'd initially thought._

— _"All beings need balance between Light and Dark. Even worlds. Too much Light is dangerous, and we must harness the Darkness to bring equilibrium. We must take this Heart."_ _—_

— _"By submitting this world to the Darkness, there shall be balance."_ _—_

— _"Where's she going to go?" Riku asked. "She's…going to be okay, right?"_ _—_

— " _Either you come with me or you stay here in a broken world whose new ruler just became a force of nature," Riku said, "You don't have a choice."_ _—_

Everything finally began to piece together.

What was it Ansem had told him when Kairi and the others were running away? _"Your body submits. Your Heart is mine. And yet your mind resists"_? Riku knew he deserved that. To have been reduced to nothing more than the mind of a monster, wandering through the realm he belonged in.

No, not quite, Riku thinks, because he deserved worse than this. This was a mercy, considering.

— _He hadn't even realized he was screaming through his own mouth until Sora had already disappeared. Had already_ died. _—_

If Riku had a stomach, he would have puked right there in front of Aqua and Mickey. The memory of Sora's body crumbling, the Dark keyblade Ansem had forged with the Hearts of the Princesses and Riku's own Mark of Bequeathal spearing into her chest. The memory of his hands and his arms wielding it in a true fight to the death.

 _Riku_ had done that. He'd tried to hurt her. Anyone less willing to face the great and horrible truth would maybe argue that was Ansem's doing, that it was Ansem who tried to kill Sora, and that it was Ansem who used him for purposes Riku was only just beginning to discover.

But it was Riku who had let him in.

And it was Riku who had chosen glory.

'Glory', though, had turned out to mean something far different than what Riku expected: Worlds and their people crumbling to destruction from the Darkness taking their Hearts. A door to the Darkness opening up and threatening the Realm of Light (he knew the instant Mickey said it that Ansem must have had something to do with it). Whatever else it was Ansem had done with his body while traveling through time.

And now glory meant the death of Sora.

Sometime just after they had begun to engage in that duel, when Ansem was still busy gloating to Sora, Riku had torn his focus away from the fight for a minute when he realized the ever-present screaming he had been hearing since Ansem possessed him had ceased. The other voice had been trying to say something to him personally.

 _What?_ He had asked.

The other voice was naught more than a murmur at the most by then, but somehow, miraculously, Riku had been able to hear it just fine. Even as quiet as it was, heavy with the weight of what must have been a decade's worth of guilt and loathing, judging by Ansem's remarks.

 _When I chose you,_ the other voice answered, _I thought I saw that you would overcome._

"—Then we just gotta meet up with the bearer to the keyblade of the Realm of Light on the other side, and together we'll be able to fix this!" Mickey continued on.

Riku may not have had a stomach to call his own, but at least he had knees now, and he sank to them at the thought of all he had done: That he had doomed all of existence. His home. His friends.

Mickey and Aqua both turned at the sound.

"Oh no, Riku?" Mickey hurried over. "What's wrong? Are you okay?"

"Is the Darkness in this place getting to you too?" Aqua asked, tentatively holding out a blackened hand before flinching it back once she caught sight of it. Riku held his head.

"She's gone," He choked out.

"Who is?"

"Sora. She had the keyblade to the Realm of Light and now she's dead," He spluttered. Riku dug his fingers into his scalp and a sob escaped from him. "I-I did it. It was me. And I destroyed any chance of saving the worlds."

"I'm sure you didn't really—" Mickey started, but Aqua took a step forward and held an arm out to stop him midsentence. Riku could see her other hand twitching slightly from where it rested at her side, and he knew she must have been restraining herself from summoning her keyblade.

"Tell us what you mean," She ordered. "Now."

Riku confessed to everything. From his encounter with Ansem back on the islands all the way to Sora's end at Hollow Bastion, finishing with Kairi and the others making their escape. Or, he certainly hoped they had escaped. Riku hadn't seen what happened to them after they fled the chamber. Mickey tried interjecting here and there with protests that it couldn't really be that bad as Riku said, that everything would work out, but his reasoning became flimsier as Riku went on. Aqua, meanwhile, stayed deadly quiet. Until he mentioned what the other voice said.

"That was Terra," Her face softened. "He told me he spoke to you, and that you'd fallen to Xehanort's schemes as badly as he did. I thought the worst had happened until we found you."

"But the worst really did happen," Riku replied. He would have wiped at his face if he could make tears. "Sora's dead. The worlds are going to end. Ansem won."

"That couldn't be Ansem," Mickey protested. "I knew King Ansem the Wise from before Radiant Garden fell. Nobody's heard from him in years, but the guy you're talking about doesn't sound like him at all."

"And it wasn't King Ansem the Wise who performed the ceremony of the keyblade's passage with you, _or_ this other Ansem fellow you speak of," Aqua clarified. She took a star-shaped charm made of glass and carved wood from the pocket of her overskirts. "Because I know for a fact that was Terra. He told me once that he found the islands with fruit that looked like stars that our Master Eraqus told us of, and a silver-haired boy that he decided to pass his keyblade on to. He was going to come back for you and take you under his wing when he passed his Mark of Mastery exam, but as you probably figured out, things didn't go to plan after that."

 _So Ansem lied to me about that too,_ Riku thought. The irony that he had tried to get away from one liar—Maleficent—by running straight into the reach of another was not lost on him.

Aqua paused before she finally relaxed the hand that still twitched for her keyblade.

"When I finally saw Terra again, he told me he was able to contact me with a little help and a memory of me," She confessed. The charm tinkled slightly in her grip. "Maybe you should try the same with Sora."

"But she's dead."

"We don't know that for sure," Aqua insisted.

Riku slowly shook his head. "But we do. I saw her disappear into Light and two Hearts came out. One of them was Kairi's, the other just disappeared. That had to be Sora's."

"For a while, I had worried that maybe Terra had died, too," She replied as she extended a hand towards him. "But life has a way of surprising us. Just try to reach her."

"That's right," Mickey added. "I'm sure you can feel the echoes of her Heart. Try it!"

"Think of a memory of Sora and imagine yourself reaching towards her Heart. I'll try to help you connect."

Riku wordlessly took her hand and closed his eyes. He thought of Sora, years ago, hand in hand with him as they stood under the countless shooting stars.

— _The crown necklace looked better on her, he thought to himself as he watched it glow in the stars' half-light. It suited her. —_

It was a good memory, before. A happy one. But now all he could think of was _I took that necklace away. I'm the one who broke that promise. Not Sora._

He reached, but Riku could not sense anything yet. He wasn't sure what he should be feeling, but he imagined feeling nothing wasn't it.

— " _Riku, what if one hits the islands? Will we die?"_ _It was the first time he had ever heard her express the same kind of fear he had felt every day of his life. —_

Still nothing.

— " _That's okay. I'll protect you from the dark, too." —_

That part of the memory hurt worst of all, yet Riku continued to reach. And then he felt it at last: The sensation that he was walking out of a very long tunnel into another room, or, Riku could tell it was supposed to be another room. But instead all he felt was a hollow coldness. An absence.

"Sh-she's really gone," He fretted. He opened his eyes again and knew Aqua must have felt it too, for the parts of her skin that hadn't turned yet were paled as a visceral unease overtook her countenance. Her hand went cold in his. "She's dead, there's no other way."

Aqua said nothing. And beside them both, Mickey began to look more concerned than ever as he tried desperately not to show it.

"I, uh. Hmm. Well," Mickey attempted before settling on a worried smile, "We can't give up hope! I-I'm sure she's fine. We _are_ in the Realm of Darkness, after all. There's bound to be some interference like there was with Riku!"

But Riku couldn't bring himself to believe that. And from the looks of it, neither did Aqua.

The three of them sat there in the Dark granitic earth, and none of them had anything to say. Riku listened to the utter silence of the Realm of Darkness, where not even wind danced through, and it was so quiet he swore he could hear his Heart thump desperately in his chest.

First, he thought to that fateful end in Hollow Bastion—the sounds of the heartless' rumbling, of Ansem's jeers throughout his and Sora's fight. When she leaned in close and told him everything he hadn't known he was so desperate to hear her say. And the absence of noise when she had stabbed herself with that Dark keyblade; No sounds you'd expect from such a weapon piercing someone. No sickly squelch of punctured skin nor the crack of broken bones. Nothing at all.

Next, he thought of that night where the stars rained down from the sky in droves. Where he promised to protect her with a wooden sword he later threw at her feet the same time as when he threw that promise back in her face. A promise that _he_ broke, along with the promise he'd protect her from the Dark. How could he protect her from the Dark, if he had become it? How could he protect her from himself?

Riku let go of Aqua's hand to clutch at his chest. At his Heart.

And finally, he thought: _The wrong one of us died._

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _Day Two_

Kairi was the only one awake, apart from the sporadic mumblings of Donald periodically waking up in the pilot's chair as he checked in on the autopilot's progress. Goofy had gone to bed hours ago, after a last fitful whimper over the day's events. Suffice to say, none of them were in a cheery mood. And they couldn't heed Sora's words of _'No frowning, no sad faces,'_ one bit.

She watched the clusters of worlds in the form of stars pass by them in the gummi ship window. Neverland and London, both varying shades of blue. Halloweentown, a dim tanned color that was nearly impossible to see amidst the black velvet of the sky. Deep Jungle, glowing and green. When Goofy had finally gone to sleep, Donald hesitantly offered her Sora's old room to sleep in. Kairi had turned him down—it was unthinkable to her to even so much as open the door to her quarters just yet. Like it was disrespectful somehow, though Kairi knew Sora wouldn't have minded her using it.

And so she sat in Sora's old chair, still wide awake. Kairi supposed having her body essentially be asleep for the past month helped her catch up on a lot of rest, or perhaps it was the last dregs of adrenaline still running through her system. The hours ticked by in a blur of starlight and memories of all Kairi had seen through Sora's eyes within both _Highwind_ and whatever worlds they passed on the last leg back to Traverse Town.

 _It was Goofy that spoke first, once the last of Hollow Bastion's visage faded from view._

" _What're we gonna do with no key? Now that Sora's…"_

 _He didn't finish his sentence, and instead blew his nose with a fluttering handkerchief from his pocket, making a loud honking sound as he did. Kairi could see Donald's grip on the steering wheel falter slightly._

" _We'll get back to Traverse Town and tell the others what happened," He sounded strained. "We'll find the king, he'll know what to do next."_

" _But we don't know where he is," Goofy replied. "The last we heard from him was his letter telling us to find Sora."_

" _Then we'll find him."_

 _And that was the end of that._

There had been countless other things Kairi had considered asking—What if the stars resumed going out, or if they never found the king, or the matters of what she'd learned from her time with Maleficent and Apprentice Xehanort. Or Ansem, as he apparently preferred now. Ansem, Seeker of Darkness. But every time she tried, Kairi could never find the words.

She shivered. Ansem didn't need to seek the Darkness. Not when it draped itself over him like a second skin.

And when he used it to wear _Riku_ like a second skin, too. As he used Riku's strength and Riku's Heart to fight Sora to the death in some awful reenactment of childhood fun. Kairi shivered again. She wasn't sure she'd ever forget the oddly peaceful expression on Sora's face as she faded to nothing.

A pleasant chime from the gummi ship's intercom interrupted Kairi's thoughts as Traverse Town began to loom in the windshield, before Donald awoke and quickly turned off the autopilot to commence disembarking. As he steered his way into the hangar, and the light of the stars was replaced by ceiling lamps in neat, organized rows, Kairi gave a long exhale at the sight of Aerith, Cid, Yuffie, and Leon already there and waiting for them, with Jiminy on Yuffie's shoulder. She wasn't looking forward to this conversation.

By the time Kairi and Donald unbuckled themselves and made their way towards the hatch, Goofy was already there and opening the door with a stifled yawn. She could see his shoulders continue to slump as she staggered out of the gummi ship behind him, and Kairi knew his downcast demeanor wasn't from just sleeplessness.

"Hey, it must have worked!" Yuffie declared as she approached. Behind her, the others followed with varying degrees of cheer; Even Leon, stoic as he usually was, had a small smile upon seeing them. "You're Kairi, right?"

All she could manage in response was a nod.

"Sora's told us so much about you," Aerith said. "Riku, too. Is he still on the ship?"

Kairi, Donald, and Goofy all exchanged morose glances after she asked.

"He's not on the ship, is he," Leon speculated, studying them.

"No," Goofy answered in a tone that was close to a whimper.

"I don't have a good feeling about this," Jiminy fiddled with his tiny umbrella.

Behind the gang, Cid was watching the gummi ship with a slight squint. Kairi could tell immediately as to who he was looking for before he asked. "Where's Sora?"

"Hey, yeah, what's holding her up?" Yuffie joked, "Don't tell me she's still…sleeping…"

The grin slid off of Yuffie's face at the sight of Kairi, Donald, and Goofy looking sadder than ever at this. Jiminy wiped away a tear. Goofy quietly took off his hat and held it in his hands, as Donald did the same with his own beside him.

"No," Aerith whispered before she clutched her hands to her mouth. Leon wrenched his head towards the gummi ship, its color palette appearing much more subdued in the bleak fluorescent lighting as if matching the mood, and he marched towards it to confirm the unspoken news for himself.

Kairi turned towards him. "I'm sorry," she apologized, "She—"

"Don't say it," Cid finally spoke through gritted teeth, and she turned back to see him keeping his eyes twisted shut in a grimace. The ever-present toothpick in his mouth broke, and the half hanging out fluttered to the floor. "Please don't say it, kid. Not in front of me."

He turned on his heel and quickly walked away from the gummi ship, away from all of them, and Yuffie held a hand out as he passed before she let it limply fall to her side. "Cid?"

Cid gave no response as he made his way towards the exit.

And then, from the gummi ship, a scuffle began as Leon shouted out. They all turned to see him having been about to enter _Highwind_ but stopped mid-step as a black gnarled blur sped past.

"Heartless!"

"There was a heartless on the ship?" Donald questioned, "How did we miss it?"

"Get it, quick!" Jiminy called out.

Goofy ran after it with his shield held at the ready, and his hat forgotten on the ground in his haste. The heartless continued to run, and Kairi realized with a start that it was heading straight for Cid. And, she realized soon thereafter, it wasn't a regular heartless.

Compared to the little heartless, whose remainders of a Heart were only partway recognizable and whose translation by Kairi had still been woefully incomplete before her tumultuous exit from Hollow Bastion, this little heartless' fragments were immediately recognizable.

For it was the Heart hers had taken residence in for a month. And it was one of the Hearts whose owner Kairi had hung out with almost every day of her life.

Sora.

"Wait!" Kairi yelled as she gave chase. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Yuffie and Leon both rear their weapons as they too pursued the heartless, who was now reaching out for Cid. Kairi began to sprint.

Her vision tunneled as she focused on the heartless, seeing the missing pieces of its Heart, its Light, and overlaid it in her head with the memory of how Sora's Heart—and not the other alongside it that had belonged to the boy in the pale throne—had looked. Kairi noticed that Leon was coming closer with his gunblade reared at the ready. Yuffie's giant shuriken spiraled towards the heartless.

— " _New friends that would protect her when the time came." —_

Kairi leapt. And she thought: _This time, I'll protect you._

She wrapped her arms around the heartless in a bear hug as they both fell to the floor at Cid's feet, and he flinched back as the heartless started to claw at Kairi. She continued to hold on, even when Yuffie's shuriken that had been aimed for the heartless now left a gash in her shoulder.

"Kairi, what are you doing?" Leon barked from somewhere behind.

She fiercely shook her head and redoubled her grip as the heartless continued to squirm. Thankfully she held closely enough to keep from the worst of its clawing, but that didn't stop the sharp little points of its fingers from leaving scrapes up and down her arms.

"I said to _wait,_ " Kairi snapped back as the heartless began to kick. She didn't let up, and continued to squeeze as much as she possibly could as she closed her eyes and thought back to Deep Jungle. When Kairi had somehow, unwittingly, made a connection between their Hearts.

She had done it then by thinking of the past. A dear memory unmarred even by Apprentice Xehanort's best efforts, a memory of her grandmother and the story she shared. And Kairi had done it by believing in Light.

She'd have to do it again. But this time, Kairi would have to believe in Sora's Light, and what she remembered of it. She'd have to rekindle that connection somehow and use it to fill in the blanks.

Kairi breathed in deeply, and believed. Trusted.

 _(The first few days of class were almost a blur after the unexpected reunion with the girl, Sora, who'd found her when Kairi first woke up on the island. When the teacher wasn't looking, or during a lull, Kairi would continue to steal confused glances again and again at Sora's Hearts. None of their other classmates had two, nor anyone else she'd met. How did that happen?)_

 _(Beyond the Heart whose glare was bluish-white, almost blinding, the other was normal enough. It had but a slight stripe of Darkness that was typical of anyone. A Heart like the sky at high noon, where the Light of the sun was barely tapered by clouds.)_

She could feel herself getting closer. The heartless' squirming started to slow.

 _(A Heart whose Light was ineffably golden-yellow. Like honey and wildfires.)_

Now its squirming had ceased entirely, and Kairi tentatively peeked at it for a moment to scrutinize what fragments were remaining before giving shape to the Light she had to spare. Like using one candle to light another.

And then, without another thought, Kairi made something deep within her _flex._

She became so lost in the feeling that she didn't notice the sound of gasps around her and the heartless in her arms, nor did she notice the feeling of clawed blackened hands growing softer. Humanlike. And Kairi didn't become aware of the bright flash of Light outside of her closed eyelids. She didn't become aware of anything at all beyond that _flex_ of something deep within herself until suddenly there was a familiar bunch of unruly brown hair in her face.

"Thanks, Kairi."

Kairi felt herself grin and awkwardly cricked her neck to get Sora's hair out of her face, and snorted to get the more steadfast strands out of her nose. She got to her feet and extended a hand to Sora, who gladly took it and stood as well.

It was impossible to put into words the sheer relief she felt at her success. All Kairi could manage past the shaking of her knees was a simple, "You're welcome. And never do that again, okay?"

"Yes ma'am."

She broke into a fit of giggles. It wasn't long before Sora joined in, and there they stood. A couple of blissful lunatics standing in the middle of what might not be the end of the worlds at all, laughing together for the first time in what felt like forever. Kairi let herself rejoice in the feeling. And she especially rejoiced in the fact that she could feel anything at all, that Maleficent was gone and Kairi was _back,_ that Sora was back. That she do something as small as laugh in the middle of a gummi ship hangar with Sora and feel the stirrings of hope in her Heart for the first time in a week (a week that felt as though it passed by both in years and in no time at all).

Someone cleared their throat close by, and Sora and Kairi both looked over to see Cid and the others staring at them with pure shock.

"So, uh," Cid started cautiously, his jaw starting to work again as if to chew a toothpick that wasn't there. "Either of you care to tell us exactly what the fuck just happened?"

* * *

 **ROXAS**

 _Day Two_

He walked through the town.

After that man—he had never said anything of himself beyond that he was addressed as the 'Superior'—offered him a place with some sort of Organization Thirteen, Roxas had turned him down. He was grateful for the new name, don't get him wrong, but Roxas wasn't comfortable with the idea of just going along with someone to somewhere he didn't know to do, well, Roxas wasn't sure. The 'Superior' never gave a conclusive answer. It didn't exactly help that the whole black-leather-hooded-coat outfit looked a little sinister anyway.

And so Roxas cast one look back at that abandoned mansion he had woken up in front of before making his way through the woods. And that was how he'd ended up here, in some place called Twilight Town. The 'Superior' had offered him a whole new identity beyond just his name, but that seemed a little redundant to Roxas. He figured he had to have woken up in this place for a reason, so there must have been clues to whoever he was before lying around somewhere around here.

And so, he walked. In search of clues. An identity. A self.

At one point Roxas felt more than a little tired, but he didn't know where his past self's home was so he could sleep. 'Home' was one of the first words Roxas picked up, overheard by passerby in town. A place to 'crash', sleep, whatever one preferred to call it. A place to belong.

Something in his chest hurt at that thought. Maybe it was one of the clues to who he was before—some sort of pain and vague wanting of somewhere just for him. A place by another's side. Another's story.

A small cluster of teens his age passed by just then, laughing at something one of them said in a derisive tone about a 'Seifer'. Two boys and a girl, all of them eating some sort of blue ice cream held with wooden sticks. Roxas stopped in his tracks to watch them continue on, still laughing. Still together.

Friends.

His chest hurt again at that word. Roxas hadn't heard the word 'friends' from any passerby, nobody at all. But it came to him so clearly, and at that moment Roxas wanted 'friends' more than anything else. More than the ice cream the teens held in their hands, which he could feel his stomach growl at. He hadn't eaten anything since he'd woken up.

Roxas gave a start when he felt a hand clasp onto his shoulder. He looked up to see a young man with a riot of bright red hair and tattoos like tear drops—or a clown's markings—under his light green eyes. He wore the exact same style of coat as the 'Superior'.

"So you're the new kid, huh?" The young man asked with a wry smile.

'New kid'? What was a 'new kid'?

Roxas' silence dragged on as he tried to figure out what he said, and eventually the young man ran his fingers through his hair as his expression fell flat.

"Right, I forgot about this part of the transformation," The young man said, and used the hand still clasped around Roxas' shoulder to steer him towards a vendor cart some paces away, the sign of which had a bright blue ice cream bar just like the ones the passing teens were eating. "Guess I didn't bother to get it memorized since it's been so long since any of us had to deal with that. You're probably starving, huh?"

"Stomach hurts," Roxas mumbled.

"Yeah, it'll do that," The young man joked. "That's what 'starving' usually feels like. Two, please," He finished to the ice cream vendor, with two fingers held up.

Ice cream in hand, they made their way to the sewers of Twilight Town. _'Yeah, it reeks,'_ The young man—whose name was Axel, Roxas soon learned—had said, _'But subtlety's the name of the game. Can't go freaking out people on the streets when you're doing_ this, _'_ he explained with a flourish, and Axel had summoned something he called a 'Dark portal' that he and Roxas then stepped through to find themselves on the balcony of the giant clock tower in the middle of the town.

Roxas wasn't sure if he was still hungry after the awful smell of the sewers, until he unwrapped the ice cream and cautiously tried taking a bite. The coldness against his teeth was painful, and Roxas quickly pressed a hand to his mouth with a wince. Axel guffawed, his own mouth full of blue ice cream.

"Hah! You're just like Isa was—I mean, um. _Saïx,_ _" he finished awkwardly. His mouth curved into an uncomfortable shape around the ice cream before he swallowed, and explained, "Saïx can't bite into ice cream either. He's a coworker of mine," Axel said at Roxas' confused glance._

 _"'Coworker'?"_

"Yeah," he answered. "A 'coworker' is someone you work with. At a job."

"'Job'?"

"You're a regular parrot, huh?" Axel remarked. "I guess I can work with that. Better than being a zombie, anyway. You're picking things up fast. A job's something you do to live—well, pay for living, anyway. My job's with Organization Thirteen."

Roxas blinked. "Superior," he replied, taking a lick of his ice cream instead. Now that the pain had ebbed, Roxas realized its flavor was…not entirely pleasant. There was a bit of sweetness, but it was overpowered by the taste of salt.

"Right," Axel nodded. "That's the boss. _Saïx is more like his second-in-command," He looked over the town._

 _Roxas didn't know much, but he knew enough to tell that there was something that had soured in Saïx's and Axel's friendship. Coworker-ship? Maybe they were the same thing._

 _"Anyways," He took another bite, and Roxas was a little bewildered by it. Did Axel not feel any pain at all? "Saïx'd probably get mad if he hears that the first thing you're eating is ice cream. 'It's unhealthy,'" Axel mocked as he reclined back on one hand. He sighed. "I'm probably going to get written up later for it. Again. But it's whatever, right? Not like anything will happen; Maybe my chair will go down by a whole inch, what a tragedy."_

 _Roxas didn't respond. They both continued to eat in the quiet, with the only noises coming from the streets far below and the wind._

 _After several minutes more Axel said, "You could join up, you know."_

 _"Organization Thirteen?"_

 _"The very same. But I wouldn't blame you if you chose not to."_

 _Roxas shook his head. "Need to memorize myself before."_

"Remember your past life, you mean?" At Roxas' nod, Axel went on, "Don't worry about that part, it'll come back to you with time—it did for all of us. Well, mostof us, anyway. The boss would know who you were before: He had to, to give you your nobody name."

He remembered the sight of those silvery letters spelling out _SORA_ before turning into his new name. Was that what Axel was referring to?

"Roxas? 'Nobody name'?"

"Yeah. 'Roxas' is your nobody name," He explained. Axel looked down at the now-bare stick in his hands, the ice cream finished. He absently twirled it between his fingers. "It's the new name he gives us when we complete our transformations into nobodies—I don't know why he insists on adding in the 'X', but he makes a ridiculously big deal about it so we just go along to make him shut up—and since I know you're going to ask, 'What are nobodies?' I'm just going to go ahead with it: Somewhere along the way, you lost your Heart. A Heart's basically like who you are, your memories, your feelings about things you experience, yadda yadda yadda. That's why you can't remember anything when you first transform into a nobody; Your Heart's gone, and all your memories with it."

Axel went on, "Like I said, a Heart is who you are. With a Heart, you're someone. But without a Heart, you're no one. You're _nobody_ ," he gave a momentary smile. "It's a pretty good pun, but it's ironic too. Because without a Heart, you're just a body, but you're also a 'nobody'. Got it memorized?"

Roxas gave no response whatsoever.

Axel awkwardly scratched his head as his amusement died. "Eh, your sense of humor will probably come in later. Or I hope so, anyway," He added quietly.

But Roxas was already thinking to the description of a Heart Axel had given him, and thinking of that pain in his chest when he saw those other teens walking past together.

"'Heart'," He tried the word out and slowly raised a hand to his chest. "Here?"

"Yep."

"Hurt earlier," Roxas looked down at the streets where he had seen the teens go by earlier. "Seeing friends together. Lonely."

He hadn't heard the word 'lonely' before, either, but it came to him just as easily as 'friends' did. When Axel didn't respond, Roxas looked over to see him staring back with widened eyes and a slight gape.

"That's—" He could see Axel swallow back the expression Roxas couldn't identify. "That's probably just from you being hungry."

"Hearts get hungry?"

"No—well, yes, you could say they do—but that was probably just your stomach. You don't have a Heart, remember? Neither of us do."

But Roxas was so sure he'd felt _something_ like what was described.

"I will say, though, pain is a pretty regular part of being a nobody," Axel acquiesced. "But it's not like when you stub your toe or something. The pain of being a nobody is this awful, hollow feeling that doesn't go away. It doesn't quite hurt, but you don't…you don't feel things like you used to before when you were a somebody. The things you liked before don't make you happy anymore, or sad, or angry, or anything. Nothing can touch you anymore. And all of us nobodies respond to that in different ways, but that's why we came together to make Organization Thirteen. Or I think that's why we did," He gave a bitter scoff. "Our beginning was a little chaotic."

That sounded horrible, but Roxas still wasn't sure he had experienced the same thing. Yet he was scared of ever finding out what it felt like for himself.

"How do," Roxas scrunched up his nose slightly as he thought over how Axel talked, in efforts to get the words right. He pointed at his chest. "How do I get one?"

"A Heart?"

Roxas nodded, and Axel's wry smile came back.

"Full sentences? The training wheels are coming off early," He remarked proudly. "As for how to get a Heart, well, let me start by saying it's easier said than done."

* * *

 **SORA**

 _End of Day Two_

Cid broke two more toothpicks over the course of Sora's, Kairi's, Donald's, and Goofy's explanation of all that had gone down in Hollow Bastion, and the third one in his mouth now was threatening to do the same with how it was bending. Jiminy's pen could barely keep up, and Sora halfway expected it to spark tiny flames with the speed he wrote at. The group was now assembled in the old formerly vacant house in the Third District that Cid, Aerith, Yuffie, and Leon eventually had claimed as their residence.

"So let me get this straight," Cid pointed at Kairi first, "You and the others that have been going missing all over the place are apparently some sort of Heart Princess thing, which we're not even sure what it means other than that bad guys like Maleficent and Apprenti—Terra—Damn it, _Ansem_ -but-not-our-Ansem are probably going to keep on going after you. And that you can help open the Door to Kingdom freakin' Hearts and turn heartless back into people."

"Princess of Heart," Kairi corrected, "And yeah, I think."

"Not like Maleficent can do anything anymore," Sora grinned and started speaking in a sing-song tone, "'Cause we totally kicked her bu-u-utt!"

"About that," Cid pointed at her next. "Kid, what the hell? You jumped out a gaping hole in the chapel tower to try and jump right onto Maleficent's back?! What if you missed? What if Donald didn't catch you in time? What if you did land on her back, and found out the hard way that _a broken toy sword_ wouldn't do shit against a dragon?"

Sora slumped in her chair a little lower at every question Cid volleyed. He had never been this mad at her before. A couple of seats over Donald nodded in agreement with him, and it caught Cid's glare.

"Don't think I'm not going to say anything to you guys after this," He grumbled at Donald and Goofy. "Leaving a fourteen-year-old girl to run around in the home of the heartless by herself with no help, no real weapon, no nothin', is not okay. We're going to have some serious words later, you two. You're damn lucky I broke my flamethrower in the fight against that heartless armor a few weeks ago."

They both withered beneath his anger, and Donald mumbled something that sounded like, "She was supposed to stay on the gummi ship."

Cid scoffed. "You know her well enough by now that you could predict she would run off the second your backs were turned. Why couldn't she just come with you?"

Sora looked between them and spoke up. "Hey, Cid, c'mon," She squirmed when he turned back to her. This was exactly like when her mom was mad at her for…well, any of the stunts she pulled back on Destiny Islands. "They were just trying to do their jobs."

"I'm sure their king wouldn't have approved of them putting anyone in danger for the sake of just following the keyblade," he fumed. "And how did that turd manage to steal it from you?"

"I've told you a million times now, Riku's not a turd!"

"I'm with Cid on this one," Leon crossed his arms and sighed. "Say whatever you want about this Riku guy, but he doesn't come across as the greatest person ever."

"He's also fifteen, only a year older than Sora and Kairi," Aerith commented. "We all make mistakes when we're young, we're impressionable then."

"When I was fifteen, the mistakes I made included closing myself off to people and stealing from Cid's alcohol stash with Cloud and Zack. Not helping kidnap people and work with Maleficent. Or try and cause an apocalypse."

"You mean you don't still close yourself off to people and steal from Cid's stash?" Yuffie laughed.

"Is that where all my moonshine's been going over the years?"

"Don't look at me, I've got my own now. It's probably Yuffie."

"Yuffie?"

"Hey, I only tried it once because I was curious! I never even want to drink that stuff again, it tasted gross!"

"Wait, hold on," Sora turned to Leon. "'Cloud'? Did this Cloud have spiky blond hair?"

"Yeah," He squinted at her slightly.

"And carry a ridiculously giant sword?"

"…No, that thing was Zack's—" He stopped himself and squinted at her more. "Wait, Zack gave his buster sword to Cloud right before he left. Cloud would likely still have it, if he's still out there running around."

"You saw _Cloud?_ " Aerith asked Sora, taken aback. "Where? When? Did you see Zack?"

"Alright. Clearly we're gonna need an even longer conversation than we thought," Cid pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. He checked the clock. "Tomorrow. It's nearly the ass crack of dawn as it is."

"Wait a minute!" Aerith cut in and looked back to her again, and Sora saw her fingers fly to the ribbon she wore in her hair. "Zack Fair, have you seen him anywhere, too? He's just like I described a while back; Spiky black hair, carries a normal-looking sword?"

"I-I don't know," Sora was a little disconcerted by Aerith's uncharacteristic fervor. "I don't remember seeing anyone around like that on our last few outings."

Aerith looked between her, Donald, and Goofy, who were all now shaking their heads. Her face fell.

Cid, by now exhaustedly pushing his chair back and getting up with the rest of the group, wrapped an arm around her shoulders to steer her away and said, "We'll ask around if anyone else saw him, Aerith. Right now we all need some sleep. It's been a long couple of days for them."

"I—Fine," Aerith's posture sagged as she made her way down the hall, and Yuffie and Leon gave her one last sympathetic glance before turning in for the night as well.

The ensuing quiet felt a little awkward to Sora as they made their way back to the hotel. With no heartless around after they'd locked the keyhole to Traverse Town, and no pedestrians around at this hour, the group's footsteps echoed as they walked through the Second District. Sora could see Donald wringing his hands as she closed the gate behind them, with Goofy beside him looking somewhat troubled.

Sora began to open her mouth to say something before Kairi spoke up first.

"What is it, Donald?" She asked without looking over, though Sora got the feeling that Kairi already knew exactly what Donald was mustering up the guts to say.

Sora felt her eyebrows raise slightly. Kairi had become observant during her time in Sora's Heart. Or maybe she was always that way? Sora had never really noticed before.

"I, uh," Donald began.

And Goofy, beside him, trailed off, "Well…"

"…About Hollow Bastion, when I left you behind, Sora—"

"—Gawrsh, we both left you behind—"

"—But we didn't mean to ditch you, really! I thought you'd stay back—"

"—Cid was right though, Donald, Sora never really does let others handle the action alone—"

"—Even when she _really should,_ like when she doesn't have a keyblade!" Donald shook his head wildly. "But Riku was running off by then and we had a job to do—"

"—But, Donald, the king's told us before that he never leaves a friend behind. We should have stuck by that rule—"

"—And the king also told us in his last letter to follow whoever has the key and to stick with them no matter what—"

 _Oh, man,_ Sora thought to herself. Clearly this had been simmering for a while. "Guys?" She attempted.

They both looked over with clearly apologetic expressions. Donald wrung his hands again, and said, "We want to apologize for ditching you. Cid was right in saying we could have just had you come with us."

"Yeah," Goofy agreed. "It sure couldn't have been an easy task trying to get through all those heartless by yourself with no keyblade. Even as much as The Beast must've helped you out later, you were still alone for a good while."

"How did you get through, anyway?" Donald questioned. "They were relentless for us, but they couldn't have been any better for you. Even if they weren't attracted to the fact that you wield the keyblade at that point. Did you use magic?"

"I did," Sora confirmed. "I didn't need much, though. I didn't see any heartless at all until I came up on them throwing themselves at The Beast, but those I took care of with a few quick spells. And after that, when we walked into the citadel together, the heartless avoided us entirely for some reason. Except for that little one."

Donald hummed. "That's strange."

"I know, right?"

"Well," Donald concluded after a moment, and turned up his bill slightly with a haughty air. "I always knew you were better at magic than you claimed. That spellwork against Ansem told me so—it was a good fire spell. Fast, too, and from a broken lens like the toy sword? I taught you well."

"Thank y—Wait! You haven't taught me anything!" Sora cried heatedly as they all laughed and gave chase towards the hotel. "I should be thanking Merlin!"

"Merlin's not the one who saved your tailfeathers when you jumped out the side of the wall!" Donald squawked back as he opened the door for them to walk through.

"I don't even _have_ tailfeathers," She grumbled.

It was not long later that Goofy and Kairi had already filtered into their separate rooms (as Traverse Town's hotel had more than a few vacancies at the moment with the trio's success in their work around the worlds) that Donald fixed Sora with an unexpectedly sincere expression.

"You, uh," Donald cleared his throat, and he gained the same unsure mien that he had not long after they left Cid's residence, "You do know I'm sorry, right? For leaving you behind like that?"

"It's fine, Donald," Sora answered. "Really. I know you did what you had to do."

Donald didn't look so convinced by that, though, and so Sora went on, "I'm not going to lie and say it didn't hurt that you did that. It _did_ hurt. A lot. But I get it—you were doing what you thought was right at the time, and later on when you protected me from Ri—Ansem's fire spell, you were doing what you thought was right then, too. And that's the important part, that you did what you did not to try and hurt me, but because you were thinking you were supposed to do that on orders of your king. But then later you decided to ignore the order and stood up to Ansem along with Goofy when it looked like things were worse than we all imagined, and you made your own choice then. That's what matters in the end," She shrugged. "You were doing your best with what you knew the whole time, and I get it. That's why it's okay with me."

"Cid, though," Sora couldn't stifle her smirk at Donald's dawning panic at the reminder. "He's probably a little harder to convince. Good luck with that."

"Right," He shivered slightly. "Good night, Sora."

"G'Night, Donald."

As she closed the door behind her, Sora spied Kairi having already claimed the bed closest to the wall and was now busying herself with something clutched in her hand. The thalassa shell charm, Sora realized as she got closer and flopped down. Except it was shoddily assembled; The twine was awkwardly crossed, the pieces were misaligned. The charm was nowhere near Kairi's usual standards, and Sora knew well how meticulous she could be.

"You still had it all this time?" Sora questioned. Kairi nodded.

"Riku found it one day after one of his excursions," She explained, "Sticking out of my pocket. I didn't even realize I still had it until then—But the second he saw it, his Light," Kairi shook her head near imperceptibly as she pulled one end of the string and the whole knot fell apart. She stared down at the disassembled pieces in her hand. "It dimmed down to nearly nothing. For a second I thought he'd fall to the Dark right then and there, I don't know what held him back."

Sora said nothing. She could feel her lips press together in a thin line at the reminder of the final fight in Hollow Bastion, when she'd come to the horrible conclusion that it was _Riku_ she'd have to fight after all this time, after all they'd been through together, until Kairi gripped her tight and told her that who she thought was Riku was someone else—not just metaphorically, but in truth. That Riku had figuratively and literally lost himself along the way.

 _(Not-Riku, Kairi mouthed, and Sora could feel everything bleed away.)_

Kairi stopped fiddling with the charm. "What did you say to him?"

"When?"

"There at the end of the fight," She responded. "You leaned in close and told him something, and all of Riku's Light came back. I never got the chance to ask when we explained everything to Cid and the rest."

Sora could feel her face turn hot at the memory and turned away before Kairi could notice.

 _It took everything she had to hold back Ansem's keyblade, and Sora's ears rang from the screech as they collided. Her arms were beginning to tremble from the fight having dragged on for so long. She licked her lips before steeling herself, and thought that if Kairi was right, and Riku really_ was _in there somewhere, that she would only have one chance at this._

" _The keyblade," Sora bore her eyes into his when she spoke, and tried to remember the time when they weren't Darkened with buried pain and fury coming to the fore. When her memories involving the name 'Riku' were not marred by the Dark, and were instead focused on a laugh that made her feel like she was on top of the world. "It never mattered, Riku."_

 _Sora focused on the memory of a smile—his smile—that lit up everything like even the smallest sliver of the moon through a dreary night. She leaned in._

" _It never mattered to me what sort of worlds it helped me see. It never mattered how many friends it helped me make. Because in the end I never forgot you guys," She leaned in closer yet, and Riku—Sora knew it in her bones that it was Riku breaking through then—flickered his eyes down to her lips for a moment._

" _That's all that mattered in the end to me," Sora finished. "You were my favorite."_

"Um, j-just the truth," Sora faltered, and she prayed that Kairi wouldn't ask any more on that specific matter.

Thankfully, Kairi gave no more response to that beyond her head turning slightly towards Sora before focusing back on the charm's pieces.

"It'll never be the same between the three of us again, will it?" Kairi asked. Sora winced slightly at her dejected tone. She trailed off, "Now that Riku's lost his…"

"It will," Sora's response was much more assured this time, both to convince Kairi and herself. "It has to."

For if it didn't, that would mean the bad guys won. That the Darkness won. That, no matter what her and her friends' efforts yielded, all of it would be for nothing. And that would be unacceptable.

Sure, Sora could be stubborn to a fault. She knew that. But her stubbornness had gotten her this far—saving Kairi, defeating Maleficent—and Sora knew it would get her further yet. Beyond just saving the worlds, it would be what she needed to save her friends from the enormity of what happened.

Highwind runs on happy faces, and Sora knew now that everything else in life did, too. So she would not only find the strength to keep going, and not only find the wisdom to figure out what to do, but Sora would bring the cheer as she always did. She had to if she wanted her and Riku and Kairi to turn out fine after all of this.

Yet Kairi's response was an unconvinced sound as she carefully placed the pieces of the charm onto the bedside table. Sora hesitated for a moment before going back to her own bed and flopping down again, and tiredly kicked off her shoes. It really had been a long couple of days, she thought with a yawn. Now that all of the initial excitement had worn off Sora could feel her eyelids begin to droop.

"Night night," was all Kairi said as she turned off the light.

They both laid there in the dark.

As the minutes passed Sora could tell, with the experience of countless sleepovers over the years, that Kairi hadn't fallen asleep yet. Because when she did, Kairi snored loudly enough for it to register as a mild earthquake. Sora couldn't stifle her laughter at that.

"What?" Kairi asked in the dark.

"Nothing, nothing," She assured, before cracking up again. "It's just that you snore a lot."

Kairi gave a quick laugh before stopping herself. "No I don't!"

"Yes you do!"

"Are we seriously having this argument again?" Kairi's smile was wide enough that Sora could hear it in her response. "I'm not the one who snores, that's you."

"How could I get away with sleeping in class back home if I snored?"

"I don't know, magic or something."

"I didn't even know magic before all this!"

"Well, you still snored!"

Sora could hear the hushed _whump!_ As Kairi's arm landed beside her in her own bed, and then an equally quiet sliding noise as she grabbed onto a spare pillow and hoisted it into the air. Sora didn't need to see anything to know exactly what Kairi was about to do, and snickered as she held her arms above her before the launched pillow could hit her in the face. It seemed Kairi's time away from her own body hadn't messed with her aim one bit.

Sora grabbed the pillow when it landed and held it close before adding it to her growing collection. "You're not getting this back, you know. It's mine forever now."

"Fine. So long as you say I don't snore."

"Nope."

Sora snickered again as Kairi sighed. Sora couldn't deny how happy she felt at having Kairi here beside her again. That she'd managed to accomplish at least one goal on her list and get one of her friends back. And, most importantly, that Sora wasn't going crazy when she'd seen Kairi appear in her vision throughout her journey (Yuffie pulled quite an interesting face at that particular revelation). Sora's laugh at that thought was quieter, but still loud enough for Kairi to notice.

"What now? Still laughing at my hypothetical snoring again?"

"No," Sora teasingly trailed out the word, and she could practically _hear_ Kairi's deadpan look in response. "I'm just glad you're back is all. Really."

"Oh," Kairi remarked before going quiet for a moment. "Me too."

By now Sora really was about to fall asleep. But before she did, as she could hear Kairi's breathing even out into the familiar rhythm of sleeping as well, Kairi spoke again with another smile that Sora could hear in her words once more: "Me too."

* * *

 **ROXAS**

 _End of Day Two_

Axel didn't exactly, in his own words, 'pull any punches' when he discussed what Organization Thirteen was and what they wanted. Why they had wanted Roxas to join.

Something about how he had the ability to wield a key-shaped sword that could take Hearts from the heartless, creatures that were, from what Roxas understood, at one time people who fell to the Darkness. Or people who were forced to become heartless by other heartless. Or something.

It all sounded stranger the more Axel discussed about it. And it didn't help that he used a lot of 'idioms'—What was a punch? Why would you pull one? He had also said something about a lot of the explanation going 'over his head', but that didn't make any sense either. If something went over his head, Roxas was sure he'd see it. But he hadn't seen anything other than just birds in the sky.

Either way, Axel discussed the 'nitty gritty' parts of the Organization; The feuds between members, how a lot of them were less than polite. Really, how all of them were a little strange. But that was okay with him. Roxas could deal with impoliteness. And he figured he was a little strange, himself. So long as it was all to get a Heart, and to become whole people again, Roxas decided it made sense.

 _("The pain of being a nobody is this awful, hollow feeling that doesn't go away. It doesn't quite hurt, but you don't…you don't feel things like you used to before when you were a somebody. The things you liked before don't make you happy anymore, or sad, or angry, or anything. Nothing can touch you anymore.")_

He hated the sound of that. Hated it. More than anything.

Roxas knew he didn't know much of the world. That he was sure to come across countless other things he hated or didn't hate, or even liked, and that he would learn to describe them in a larger range of language. But this…he wasn't sure if he'd ever have words to describe how he felt at the sound of that experience. Like a barbed thing had settled somewhere in his stomach and was trying to climb up his throat. Like his veins had turned as cold as sea-salt ice cream. Like a weight on his shoulders.

He could handle impoliteness, or even meanness, so long as it meant he never had to deal with that. He could deal with strange people, so long as it never meant that.

If the 'boss' or 'Superior' had ever told him of this feeling or lack thereof, Roxas would have said yes the first time. But he didn't. And so Axel had found him and told him of a piece of the world he liked the sound of, and another piece of the world—their world as nobodies, and what it meant to be one—he did not like the sound of. He didn't want to be a nobody. He wanted to be a somebody. He wanted a Heart.

And so, finally, Roxas accepted the offer to join.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _Day Four_

 _The waterway of Traverse Town was exactly where she remembered from her time in Sora's Heart, even down to the busted-in grating. Kairi's shoes soon became waterlogged as she awkwardly made her way to the rocky island in the underground pond, where Leon was in the middle of his training exercises. She wasn't sure what to say, and it didn't help that Leon was a bit intimidating. Kairi had never been good with stoic people._

 _But thankfully, or embarrassingly, Leon spoke up first. "Yeah? What is it?"_

 _Now she was beginning to lose her nerve and wrung her hands. "Um, never mind, I'll just ask Cid or Yuffie—"_

 _He put down his gunsword and turned to Kairi. "You're not interrupting anything, don't be afraid to ask."_

" _I…okay," She exhaled, and forced herself to stand straight up. Perhaps her posture would feign courage where she couldn't. "In that whole conversation earlier, I said the heartless and whoever else wanting to access Kingdom Hearts would likely target me first. Me and the other Princesses of Heart."_

" _They would."_

" _So," Kairi tried, "Maleficent and Xehanort are only the beginning, right? Even after we defeat them, there's still the heartless. And even if we defeat all of the heartless for good, forever, which is kind of unlikely since anyone that falls to the Darkness in their Hearts can become one, there's still whoever else manages to find out about Kingdom Hearts and how they can make the Key to open its Door. And those people will try and find a way to take my Heart again too."_

 _Leon nodded. "They will."_

" _With that in mind, I was wanting to ask," Her fingertips twitched, and Kairi resisted the urge to wring them again. "Can you teach me how to fight?"_

"And I thought Iwas the crazy one," Sora said with wide eyes. "Whatever happened to you being the voice of reason?"

They were both sitting just outside of the hangar, on a rare break from helping the rest of the Traverse Town crew repair their various weapons in preparation for what was to come; Most of the work, admittedly, was for repairing and tuning up Cid's gummi ship and flamethrower (the latter of which Cid promptly scorched Donald's backside bare with upon completion before a harried shield spell went up in time to block the rest of the flames—After that, Donald's only response was a strong glare aimed at Cid and a muttered "I'll allow it _this_ time," before making his escape).

Kairi had just proposed an idea to Sora that was, admittedly, kind of reckless. Even with her beginning training sessions with Leon and Yuffie.

"It would work, though," Kairi reminded her. "The heartless go after you for your keyblade, but they go after me and others like me for my Heart. That's really all they want in the end, isn't it? Hearts? The other Princesses are inside the citadel probably doing their best to fend the heartless off with The Beast's help. But if you can get in there as fast as possible and lock the keyhole it would take care of the heartless sooner. And if I can attract the heartless to us so they'll ignore you, that'll allow you to look for the keyhole and lock it without any distraction."

"I mean, yeah, but," Sora was still unconvinced. She worked her jaw, undoubtedly to come up with something to say in protest. "What about you?"

"What about me? I'll be fine."

"But," She repeated. "You can't fight like me or Riku can. You'll get hurt."

"I might not have a keyblade," Kairi remembered what Sora had said in the depths of Hollow Bastion, just before that final fight to Ansem. When she pulled off a miracle like it was nothing. But if Sora could do it, she thought, maybe Kairi could too. She could feel the corners of her eyes crinkling into a smile. "But I can fight now. Some. I can do without one of your fancy keyblades, I'll find a pipe or something."

Sora gave her a deadpan look. Kairi laughed.

"When I said that, I was just," Sora gestured futilely, waving her hands as if she would pluck up the missing words from midair. "I don't know. I was trying to put on a bluff or whatever. I didn't even know he wasn't Riku then! But at least by that point I had experience whacking the heartless around! Kairi, your body's been asleep for a month. What you're saying isn't the same thing!"

"And well, what did you do in the very beginning? It was the same thing as me now, right? You had a wooden sword and then it turned into the keyblade and you still didn't have much experience with it."

Sora blinked. "I keep forgetting you were watching me for a whole month. But at least I still had Donald and Goofy then!"

"Of course I watched, I wanted to make sure you didn't die or anything," Kairi shook her head. "And it'll be the same here. Except I'll have Leon and Cid and everyone close by if anything happens, just like you'll have Donald and Goofy."

There was a pause after that, and Kairi left her to her thoughts as she looked up at the nighttime sky instead. She'd let Sora have her time to mull it over, but whether or not she accepted it Kairi already made up her mind. For Kairi felt that weight of Darkness at the furthest edge of her senses again in these past few days in Traverse Town, and she had no idea what could be causing it this time—it was nowhere near the strength that it was in the islands' final days, but it was enough to be annoying, like a mild itch that wouldn't stop. And Kairi knew it couldn't be from Traverse Town's Heart, for she had checked the locked keyhole herself to make sure. So it must have been from Hollow Bastion's Heart, she figured, for she couldn't come up with any other explanation. If nothing else it worked as another reason for Kairi to go along: Not only was Hollow Bastion her home once, but it needed her help. The other Princesses of Heart needed her help too. And Cid, Leon, Yuffie, Aerith…they needed every spare set of hands they could get to fight.

Kairi had waited around for others to help for a month. She was sick of waiting.

Now she would fight.

"I looked everywhere for you," Sora said quietly. Kairi glanced over to see Sora was staring up at the stars as well. "The entire time. I never forgot about you. When I saw you for the first time on that pirate ship—I—all I wanted then was to be with you guys again and fix whatever was wrong with you, Kairi."

 _(Riku kept his eyes closed. "When I saw it, that's when I wised up and realized you abandoned us both. That it was worse than I thought.")_

 _(Kairi gritted her teeth past the first few dregs of memory seeping into her, shaking off the cobwebs and now beginning waves of what she knew would be an ocean of fear that had been held back by a dam made of long-dead summer days. A dam that crumbled into the wind like leaves.)_

 _(She gritted her teeth and spoke, "You can't believe him, Sora. He wasn't here to see. You never abandoned us.")_

"I knew," She nudged Sora's shoulder with her own. "I knew the whole time. You would never do that."

Kairi watched as Sora nearly slumped forward at that with the force of her own relief. "I'd been worried about that for a while."

"I knew that too."

Sora huffed out a laugh at that. "Just how much were you watching, Kai?"

"A lot," She shrugged. "But don't change the subject. I'll be okay in Hollow Bastion, really. Sure, it's probably not the best way to learn how to fight, going right into the thick of it in the home of the heartless, but Maleficent is gone now. And I won't be alone, just as you won't be alone. We'll all be there fighting with you. We made it this far by sticking together, right?"

Sora's former grin buckled into an uncomfortable shape, and she nervously scratched at the back of her head.

"I mean, you're right. Not about me changing the subject, which I'm not," Sora shot her a quick stern glance that looked completely out of place on her, and Kairi chuckled. "But it's just—I just got you back again. What if you get hurt? What if something happens?"

"I'll be fine. I'll wing it like you did," Kairi joked. "I'm the one who should be worrying; You learned how to fly a gummi ship by zooming through an obstacle course against a dragon, Sora. A dragon whose back you were first going to try and jump onto and figure out how to fight with a broken wooden sword along the way. Next to that, fighting off the last of the heartless running around there with everyone who's experienced with that doesn't sound too insane in comparison."

Sora made several aborted attempts at a rebuttal to that, but must have found no plausible argument, for then she deflated slightly and mumbled, "Still, though. I'm scared there would be nothing I could do to fix it if we were separated like before again."

 _(But what if there_ _was_ _something you could do? Like have a good luck charm to help turn that roll of the dice in your favor? A wish upon a star that you could hold in your hand, to ebb the waves and turn the tides back home?)_

There was a star in Kairi's pocket.

Five-pointed and complete, made of thalassa shells and twine woven properly throughout. Finished with a small crown-shaped bead in the middle and a painted face on the topmost shell, drawn to look like the person it was meant for. Sora. Kairi pulled it out right then and showed it to her.

"You finished it?"

She nodded. "I was going to make ones for me and Riku too, before that Darkness began to set in on the islands and life got in the way. But I managed to finish yours," Kairi said as she began to lower it into Sora's hand.

"You're giving it to me?"

"On one condition," Kairi held it just outside of her open palm and raised one finger. "For the charm to work, you gotta promise me you'll come back after whatever happens over there so we can all be together in the end. That means no more crazy ideas that are going to get you killed. I don't know if I can turn you back from being a heartless again or not, and I don't want to find out. Okay?"

"What'll I do if there's another dragon?" Sora joked.

"Then we'll figure out how to handle it together."

"And what if the only way to save everyone is to do the stabby thing again?"

"Don't stab yourself!"

"Aw, you're such a party pooper, Kai."

"I'm _serious_ , Sora," Kairi huffed.

Sora paused, then, before finally closing her hand around the charm. And she shot Kairi another smile that was less humorous and more sincere.

"Then I'm serious, too," She decided. "No matter what happens, I'll come back and we'll all be together again. I promise."

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _Day ?_

There hadn't been any time to mourn after that.

Almost immediately after the discovery that Sora had died, when they all sat there in the quiet and Riku silently wished that he had taken her place instead, that _he_ should have been the one to pay the ultimate price for his own failings, heartless finally appeared.

Aqua and Mickey summoned their keyblades without further ado. But when Riku called Soul Eater to hand to help, Aqua vehemently shook her head and grabbed his wrist before he could raise the sword.

"Don't," She explained, "Your Heart is already fraught with Darkness enough for you to have ended up here. Trying to use your Darkness as a weapon in this place won't only be ineffective, but it could cost you more than you think."

"That's right!" Mickey shot him a thumbs-up over his shoulder. "Let us handle these guys, Riku. You make sure you don't lose yourself along the way before we can find that door and the keyblade."

"But," Riku began to protest, _'But I deserve it'_ is what he wanted to say. Yet the words died on his lips at the sight of Aqua and Mickey at work against the heartless.

They really were masters, he thought numbly. Before watching the fight Ansem had had against Maleficent—which did include some maneuvering with that Dark keyblade, but that was used nowhere near as much as magic was in the duel. And Riku hadn't been able to really assess much of Ansem's work accurately from the first-person perspective—he hadn't much frame of reference at all for skill with weapons, much less keyblades. Before, he had thought he and Sora were reasonably talented at it, but now Riku realized the two of them were downright clumsy next to the likes of Mickey and Aqua.

Aqua was by far the more visually impressive of the duo, with her endless magic lighting up the rocky terrain and making the air alternate between rippling heat, then cold, then heat again before concluding with multicolored comets that shot out of her keyblade towards the tower of heartless. Riku could feel the air thrum with the force of her magic.

Mickey, in comparison, was not as much of a visual spectacle, but his movements told Riku of his mastery of his craft just as readily. Between his improbably high leaps for his small stature, and his near-cartwheeling through the air with his keyblade out, all capped off with his spells that fired off small spheres of Light at every turn. And so between the two of them, Masters Aqua and Mickey finished off the bulk of the heartless tower before much time had passed—or, before it felt like much time had passed anyway. He wasn't sure how long time had gone on in the Realm of Light by now since he'd arrived.

Aqua stared at the last stragglers of the heartless as they scuttled off and bit her lip, as Mickey began to move on ahead. When neither she nor Riku followed him, thinking to follow after the heartless, he gestured for them and said, "Better not push our luck."

They continued their wandering. The Dark monoliths of stone and silence stretched on all around them, and the trio did not know towards where or when they walked. But they knew towards _what_ they were hoping to reach—the Kingdom Key of Darkness. The other half to Sora's keyblade.

The keyblade he had caused Sora's death for.

When Riku had brought that up earlier, Mickey had refused the notion vehemently, saying, _"No! You didn't cause how it ended, Riku—Sora, well, um, Sora made her choice then. I sure regret that it happened at all, but you had nothing to do with it. Either she would have found out that Kairi's Heart was within hers on her own at some point or that Ansem would have told her himself—it didn't change anything when he made you his vessel."_

But that ignored the truth of what had happened. And the truth was that it was Riku who had taken her keyblade. That it was Riku who took her friends. That it was Riku who took everything he could to hurt her as much as he could, for no good reason at all beyond that he wanted to. There wasn't even any benefit to a lot of what he'd said.

" _You were just the delivery girl."_

Right now, there was nothing Riku hated more than himself.

" _When I finally saw Terra again, he told me he was able to contact me with a little help and a memory of me," She confessed. The charm tinkled slightly in her grip. "Maybe you should try the same with Sora."_

He sighed. Riku knew it was pointless now—Sora was gone. Aqua's reaction had told him enough. But Riku couldn't quiet the part of his Heart somewhere underneath everything that had been awakened by that, um, _encounter_ with that heartless lookalike some weeks ago. The part that had never shut up since then and refused to acknowledge reality. The part of himself that was still calling her name even now.

 _(But he had never truly gone without her in all his life, and the idea of doing so terrified him.)_

The part of himself that had gone cold with dread.

They walked, and they walked, and they walked. Past identical formations of cracked rocks that provided the only light to be found in this place, with the trio's wanderings interrupted sporadically by increasingly tumultuous bouts against the heartless.

It wasn't long before that same part of him remembered Aqua's words once again, and thought, _Perhaps if I remember her, she will never die._ A far larger portion of him regarded that thought as a delusion— _Riku_ had killed her. It was _him_ who had forged that Dark keyblade she had stabbed into herself, _him_ who had let Ansem in, _him_ who had given Sora the idea on how to fix Kairi's predicament by telling her the details with his own lips. Sure, an onlooker could say it was Ansem who committed the deed. But Ansem was only the symptom—Riku was the syndrome. Everything that was wrong with the situation now started with himself.

And yet he couldn't help but remember her. As undeserving as he felt of that.

Riku remembered Sora first at an uncountably young age; A time when they were both so young and inexperienced as to think their world ended at the edge of whatever room they were in. When they both knew nothing of the world beyond the deafening roar of the waves and grains of sand, and each other.

Then he remembered her from a time when the revelation became clear that his world was nothing like her own—when the words _Mom_ or _Dad_ were not supposed to elicit that coiling of fear in the pit of your stomach; When dropping a glass or closing a door too loudly was not supposed to make you freeze up. When, perhaps, it was not normal for one to think of the word _home_ with the idea of someone else's instead (for Sora's parents by then had made room enough for him in their own house, and Riku didn't have the words to express how thankful he was of that. And even now he still didn't.)

After that he remembered that chance encounter with Aqua when they were both far too young to understand the gravity of what had transpired; She had seen right through them both, at that moment, and saw something in Riku that clearly she had seen before—something that he had seen in others' eyes far too many times, but seeing it in Aqua's eyes then had finally brought to the fore a frustration that had had no name until that moment. A frustration that would in the years to come whisper _They pity me. They think I'm weak. That I can't handle this._ A frustration that thought: Riku had handled conditional love and the need for approval for an amount of time that somehow managed to feel shorter on paper than it did in reality—An amount of time that stretched on into eternity in his Heart. Riku had never known anything else other than how to handle it. And to think that he was powerless against it made him feel as though he were powerless against everything, for somewhere along the way being able to handle anything had come to define every part of his identity.

And it was more or less what he had told Terra on that fateful day; Riku wanted to be the strongest. And somewhere along the way, it grew from merely needing to be the strongest to needing to be able to 'handle it'. To be enough. To be enough to where, for the people who cared about him in such a way that was truly unconditional, they would never have to be afraid again. Riku was willing to give everything to never see in anyone else's eyes the same expression that he saw every day in the mirror. At least, that was what he had told Terra.

(But instead, in a sickening twist of fate, it had been _Riku_ who had made that expression in someone else. And it was Riku who struck a keyblade, struck a Dark weapon, in such a way as to leave someone else with the wounds for once. Denial would say that it was Ansem who had done that, but truth would say that it was Riku.)

(And truth would say that Riku had never risen beyond his beginnings like he had always wanted. That he could run a thousand miles away from home, but he could never escape himself.)

They continued to walk.

He felt ashamed to dare remembering their spars now, after what their final bout had become. What it had ended in. But Riku couldn't help but think of the way Sora would jauntily raise her wooden sword to her shoulder after winning a duel—did she do the same with her keyblade after defeating heartless on her travels? Had she still given that blinding grin after pulling off a risky maneuver? Did her eyes continue to match the sky of any world she and her friends visited?

Riku thought of everything, then—not only their spars on the shore, but the feeling of sand underneath his feet. The cacophony of insects chirping and birds' calls, the long boredom of class. He remembered the sway of paopu fruit on the boughs. The smell of sunbaked sand and the spray of the ocean on the breeze. How the ground would become dappled from the noonday sun spilling in through the trees, and the bottom of the tide grew checkered with honeycombs of light.

His Heart ached at the thought of it all. Destiny Islands. Sora. Both were gone forever now because of him.

It was easy to notice the sheer enormity of the departure from how he'd started this journey to how things had turned out. Riku had spent so long getting away from the imprisonment of home only to want nothing more than to come right back to it in the end.

Yet what Riku did not notice at that moment, what none of the trio noticed, was the first few grains of sand beginning to appear under their feet.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _Day Six_

 _She nervously went through everything Leon and Yuffie had taught her like mental flashcards as if she were back in school and sitting at her desk minutes before a test. Except if Kairi failed this test, it wouldn't result in a bad grade. It would result in death._

 _What exactly, she wondered, deluded her into thinking she could do this? And not accidentally get herself and everyone else killed?_

 _Kairi had thought how easily Sora made it all look during her time inside Sora's Heart. No big deal, she had thought back then, Sora and Riku had gotten pretty good results so far just from the toy wooden swords and then their own respective weapons. But thinking about that now just made her anxiousness worse: Sora and Riku had been practicing for years before all of this happened. Even Selphie, Tidus, and Wakka, wherever they were now, had years of their own practice. They would be better off in her current position than Kairi was. Kairi had never bothered to partake in any spars or races of any kind. All she had ever bothered with in regards to those was keeping score._

 _Kairi wasn't a fighter. She never had been._

 _She wasn't ready for this. Kairi nervously clutched onto the practice sword Leon had loaned her from his days back on Radiant Garden and continued to mentally review every last stance and technique she was taught._

 _Kairi was lost in her thoughts enough to not notice the others exiting the gummi ship until she felt a hand nudge at her shoulder. She looked up to see Leon, with his head cocked and a brow raised._

" _You okay?"_

" _Y-yeah," Kairi replied slightly too quickly, and tried again. "Yeah, I'm alright."_

 _She had to be. It wasn't as if she had any other choice, did she?_

 _Leon seemed to know what she was thinking, because he then said, "You know you're allowed to not be okay, right?"_

 _She didn't respond to that, and with one more glance out the open hatch Leon sighed._

" _I get it. I've been in the same place as you before—All of us have. Zack's first time fighting, he was so nervous that he accidentally tripped into his mentor Angeal so bad that he sent them both flying over the guards' training grounds. I locked my knees so bad once that I fell over and knocked them both down when we were doing formations one day. Yuffie likes to throw out quips and seems confident now, but the first time she tried fighting a heartless in Traverse Town once she was old enough, she ran out of shuriken five minutes into encountering an exceptionally strong heartless and I found her trying to slap it to death instead. It happens."_

"… _Really?"_

 _He nodded, and Kairi could see a flicker of a smirk appear at the edges of his eyes as he murmured conspiratorially, "And you've got a better bearing than Sora for sure."_

 _That took her by surprise. "Wait, are you serious?"_

" _Yep," Leon confirmed. "Her form is ridiculously sloppy. Worse than Yuffie's, even. I think it might be from just playfighting against all your other friends for years without anyone to properly train them—I can only imagine what a mess Riku's stance must be. But don't worry so much; You've got an advantage with starting off from a clean slate. You don't have any bad habits or preconceived notions about what you should do, or any ego from thinking you already know everything and that there's nothing else to learn. People that have either of those things, more often than not, end up injured in a fight or worse."_

" _Kairi, you were willing to learn as much as you could from what I showed you," He went on as he moved back towards the open hatch. "You've done well considering we crammed as much as we could into four days. Now it's time to put that to the test and see what works for you individually."_

Right, _she thought._ What works for me?

 _Kairi wasn't exactly strong or fast. She knew that. She had never been a fan of sparring or fighting of any kind, and even as prepared as she was now, albeit marginally, Kairi still couldn't bring herself to say she was excited about it. That much was clear—but what was also clear now was that maybe her destiny was to fight all along. For she was a Princess of Heart, whether she liked it or not, and that meant that Darkness would dog her every step in whatever form it could to try and take her Heart._

 _And because she was once a resident of Radiant Garden, here at last to help retake her home._

" _I can do this," She said quietly at first, more to herself than Leon, before flexing her grip and looking him in the eye much surer this time. "I can do this."_

 _His ghost of a smirk widened into a rare smile, and Leon clapped a hand on her shoulder before leaving. "Yes, you can," He said over one shoulder as he slung his gunblade over the other. "We'll all have your back, just as you have ours. Okay?"_

" _Okay," She replied, and this time he did not question it._

"Oi, Kairi!" Yuffie shouted, "On your left!"

"Got it," She threw her weight into the sword as she swiped, and the meagre heartless crumpled entirely. Kairi tried to spare a moment to watch the Heart within sail safely away from the fight before a _swish_ was the only warning she had to duck to avoid Yuffie's absurdly overlarge shuriken sailing just past her head. "Yuffie, that's the third time you nearly hit me!"

" _Nearly_ hit you," Yuffie called back with a grunt as she roughly elbowed away a heartless that had wandered a little too close. She preferred distance, Kairi had learned in their training. Yuffie wasn't much of a fan of close combat like what they were embroiled in now. "Friendly reminder, I was aiming to hit that heartless about to get Leon—No, Leon, not that one, turn around a bit, yeah, that one—and another friendly reminder that I totally wouldn't hit you anyway, because I'm—"

"If you say you're a 'Great Ninja' one more time, Yuffie, I'm going to go insane," Leon deadpanned as he defeated the heartless in question in one hit, its Heart flying away with the rest as he already made towards another. He was productive today.

Indeed, Yuffie had repeated the refrain several times in training the past few days, first after her formally introducing herself to Kairi alongside the others once things had calmed down after Sora's return, and again and again after that in a string of continuous near-misses in training. Kairi still wasn't sure if the latter was intentional or not, because Yuffie definitely never missed after Kairi or Leon would call her on it in a spar.

But Kairi was thankful for their banter as a distraction. She wasn't able to participate in it as much as she'd like, both for the fact that she'd only just gotten to know them (seriously, how was Sora able to be at ease with anyone so fast? Kairi had never been good at that, being more of an introvert herself) and for the fact that she was still trying to figure out her own rhythm with this whole fighting heartless thing. Leon and Yuffie were clearly experienced, with how they were able to crack remarks at one another non-stop and fight multiple heartless simultaneously.

But beyond her newness to fighting, Kairi also couldn't help but struggle with the fact that these were the creatures that had already stolen her away once before. Sure, she couldn't fight back then if she'd tried, given that she couldn't exactly move, but that didn't stop the instinctive corner of her mind from whimpering _Heartless, it's heartless, they've come to take me away again—_

She did her best to ignore her fear by putting everything she had into cutting down another heartless. And another. And another.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Darkness to Light.

More heartless now, larger than the others and twice as mean. They must have been the remainders of Maleficent's numbers, and Apprentice Xehanort's. _'Widen your stance,'_ Leon's voice echoed in her head, and Kairi followed the instructions now as she tuned out the real Leon's good-natured bickering with Yuffie. _'Plant your feet, use gravity against them. Those things can be clumsy, it doesn't take much to trip up a heartless. And don't forget: Stay on your feet and don't hesitate.'_

 _Run, run, run, run—_ She bit her tongue hard enough to taste iron as she swung. And only when she opened her eyes again to see the heartless having fallen away, its freed captive Heart spiraling up towards the sky with others that had been defeated, did Kairi let out a long breath that she didn't realize she had been holding.

Somewhere along the way Kairi stopped counting, but she couldn't stop being afraid. For every time she saw the heartless approach she remembered that day in the alleyway where Maleficent had taken her to the citadel, and the day when Radiant Garden had fallen into Hollow Bastion. And she remembered that Darkest hour when she'd thought Sora dead and gone, and how the heartless had followed her and Donald and Goofy as they made their escape.

Fighting on the streets of what was formerly Radiant Garden's castle square was still managing to spur a rogue memory here and there as her eyes landed on seemingly mundane things as she fought heartless; A weathered, broken-off sign for a florist shop she'd visited one day with her grandmother after a day of testing she still couldn't remember, alleyways she'd run up and down with Lea and Isa and played games of tag and hide-and-seek in, the latter of which would often end with Kairi finding them in the same hiding spot and taking turns as to who was red-faced and who was smirking.

She hadn't really thought much about what they were up to, then, being as young as she was. All Kairi had thought of the matter was that Lea and Isa had liked each other quite a lot and that they acted weird sometimes and wouldn't give straight answers as to what they had been up to some days, much to the frustration of their parents.

But now? Now Kairi had at least an inkling of an idea, and it was enough to make her roll her eyes hard enough that she came close to not seeing the next heartless readying to lunge. Yuffie's shuriken sailed overhead again, this time at a reasonable height.

Then again, they hadn't always snuck off just to be together, hadn't they? Not long after Kairi's testing had begun and she'd started to forget everything, they had begun to sneak off to the castle from time to time to try finding out what was going on with her and the apprentices.

— _Lea's gravity-defying hair made for an unlikely silhouette in the window with Isa's as they both threw Kairi mischievous grins. It took her a moment to wake up properly and make sure she was seeing things correctly. In the corner of the room, past the other beds, a machine made a beeping sound.—_

— _In the corner, curled up tightly on the edge of the bed and facing away from them both, was a girl with long black hair who appeared to be around Lea's age. "Kairi, meet Subject X," Apprentice Xehanort proclaimed. "With time, we hope you'll come to know her better than we do. Now," He pulled out a clipboard and clicked his pen. "What do you see when you look at_ her _Heart?"—_

—" _There's others," Kairi blurted out one day while Lea was supposed to be grounded and stuck babysitting her, but had instead decided to take her along when he snuck out. She wasn't supposed to be saying anything about this, the apprentices had forbidden it, but something about the weary look in that girl's eyes pulled at her. "Other kids they're watching too. And grownups." "Wait, what?" "Yeah. So far it's a girl your age they call 'X' and a boy with really spiky blond hair that I only see around sometimes. The grownups just come in one day and then they're gone." —_

Kairi was pulled forcefully from her reverie when a heartless managed to claw at her leg, and she hissed with pain as she struck the heartless with more might than she would have otherwise. It probably wasn't a good idea to get stuck on thoughts of the past right now, she decided. It wasn't as if she could change it anyways, all Kairi could do now was to keep going.

After finishing off the heartless, cleaved from above thanks to her sword and now currently busy dissipating into Dark smoke with its Heart flying towards the sky with the others, Kairi noticed something; Beyond the weight of Darkness at the outermost edge of her senses (a nerve-wracking reminder of Destiny Islands' final days that she was not optimistic for its implications of now), there was something else she could feel coming from much closer. Something warm and reassuring, something hopeful to the point of being certain.

Something Light.

 _The Princesses of Heart,_ Kairi realized. _They must be doing something to the keyhole._ Indeed, the group had wondered how Hollow Bastion was able to remain standing after the completion of the keyhole and the heartless' rampage after their escape. If its Heart was accessible now, why hadn't the heartless consumed it already? Why hadn't Apprentice Xehanort done anything more to it to ensure its fall to the Darkness entirely? Was Apprentice Xehanort still up there somewhere?

Oh, crap. He had to be up there. The Princesses of Heart would be too useful for him to just leave them behind, especially with how he needed them to make that Dark keyblade once more. That was probably why the Princesses of Heart were doing whatever it was that they were doing to make all that Light—to protect themselves and Hollow Bastion's keyhole from Apprentice Xehanort and his heartless.

Kairi cringed against the feeling of helplessness at that. She should be up there with the other Princesses of Heart and helping. She was one of them, wasn't she? They needed her help. Sora needed her help; the heartless were especially attracted to her because she wielded the keyblade. She and Donald and Goofy were probably getting mobbed up there right now. And here Kairi was, stupidly swinging around a sword she didn't even know how to wield and probably just getting in Leon's and Yuffie's way. Even Aerith, who wasn't much of a fighter either, was up there helping pilot Cid's gummi ship alongside him and blasting heartless in the streets from above. Even Jiminy, who _definitely_ wouldn't ever amount to much as a fighter on account of his size, was still doing his part in all of this by recording Sora and the guys' journey and currently chronicling both that and the fall of Radiant Garden from Cid's and Kairi's accounts of what best they could remember so far.

Everyone had a part to play and they were doing their best. Except for Kairi.

Another heartless took the last one's place, stronger now, and Kairi quickly began to struggle against it. It only made her feel more like an impostor as she caught glimpses of Yuffie and Leon; Okay, yes, she only had four days' experience with fighting so far and she probably shouldn't be so hard on herself. But that didn't stop the fact that she felt like a kid playing pretend alongside the adults actually doing all of the work (and yes, Yuffie was only two years older than Kairi and thus hardly an adult herself, but Yuffie still had so much more experience than her). Kairi could do more than just _this,_ she thought dejectedly as the new heartless hardly gave away under her sword. But what?

 _Think, Kairi._ She was a Princess of Heart. So in theory she should be able to do whatever it was the others up there were doing to generate that Light against Apprentice Xehanort and the heartless, too. They were likely doing it all together as a group, and thus amplifying the effects, but Kairi technically had to be capable of the same thing but on a smaller scale. Or was she?

She thought about it more. The other Princesses of Heart were up there presumably generating that Light for six days straight. There was no doubt that they had to be absolutely exhausted by now. And hungry. Was there even food in Hollow Bastion? There had to be if Riku lived here for a month, Kairi wasn't sure if Maleficent even needed food with being a fairy and all. But that was beside the point.

The point was that the Princesses of Heart were doing that on six days of probably no food or sleep. Or maybe they were taking turns, like perhaps only one Princess of Heart was doing that Light thing at the moment. Which made it more probable that Kairi could do that, too. But how?

She thought back to how she'd brought back Sora from the dead. Well, back from being a heartless. It may as well have been the same thing really. But she'd done it then without any sort of instructions either and she'd still managed to succeed against all odds. If Kairi had done it once, she could do it again.

And she had done it then by believing. By trusting. And ultimately, by remembering Sora's Light and finding the pieces to it somewhere inside of herself. By shaping her own Light to match.

Kairi was barely chipping away at the heartless, and found herself getting hurt more than the heartless as the fight went on. This wasn't sustainable. But she wasn't sure she could just rustle up anywhere near the amount of Light required to do anything remotely similar to whatever the Princesses of Heart were doing at the moment, either. Not with the distraction.

She'd need help.

But obviously Leon and Yuffie wouldn't cut it, knowledgeable as they were, for Kairi would need help of a different sort. Nor would Cid be able to do much, since his talents were of a more mechanical sphere. And Kairi wasn't sure if Aerith knew enough to help with this.

No. Kairi needed help of a more magical sort.

And she knew just who to ask.

* * *

 **SORA**

 _Day Six_

"Hey, Donald?" She grunted as she sliced through one heartless and watched as two more took its place before it even finished dissipating, one bright Heart spiraling up above them. "Remember what I said about you being a genius? I take it back. I take everything back."

Per Donald's suggestion, the trio had landed in a markedly different spot than the rest of the group from Traverse Town, who were currently scouting the streets below and defeating any heartless in sight. Which had to be a lot, if what Sora was seeing right now was remotely similar. For the ruined chapel of Hollow Bastion they had returned to was practically carpeted with heartless. She really hoped Kairi wasn't having a hard time.

Donald shook a fist at her with one hand as he cast a spell with the other. "Too late, no take-backs! _Firaga!_ "

Sora barely ducked out of the way in time to avoid the ridiculously oversized fireball that sailed over hers and Goofy's heads but failed to avoid getting part of her hair singed as well. She scowled as she smelled the acrid tang of burnt hair, and saw Goofy quickly pat out a small flame on the brim of his hat while trying to hold off several heartless with his shield simultaneously on top of the work of keeping the flames from getting to Jiminy under his hat. He wasn't having much luck with the heartless, and neither was she.

She scoffed under her breath. Yeah, right, 'no take-backs.'

Sure, Sora would admit that the idea to cut past the supposed bulk of the heartless to land just outside the entrance to the chamber where the Princesses of Hearts were kept was perfectly logical. According to Kairi's estimates when they were drafting the plan, sometime at the endof their last visit, the keyhole had been completed due to Sora's freeing of Kairi's Heart. And so it was just sitting there completely unlocked, with the Heart of Hollow Bastion within it unprotected and undoubtedly already tainted beyond recognition from whatever Maleficent and Ansem had done, presuming Ansem hadn't done anything to it after their escape.

Kairi had definitely been peeved with her for that one: Not only for the self-sacrifice (which Sora insisted was still totally necessary—it wasn't as if they had any other means to extract a Heart!) but for doing so in such a fashion that completed the keyhole and assisted in Ansem's plans. Sora didn't have much argument for that particular point. She perfectly well could have yoinked the Dark keyblade along with Kairi's body and waited for a much more opportune moment to do the stabby thing and not accidentally do Ansem's work for him, like do it on the gummi ship when they were a bajillion miles away instead. So, okay, yes. Kairi was totally correct.

But…Kairi had needed help in that moment. She had been needing help for a month by then.

And when faced with that, Sora couldn't help but do what she did best. She ran in without regard for the consequences.

But it worked out just fine then, right? Mostly. And for the parts of it that didn't work out so well, Sora and everyone else were here today to fix. Or at least keep things from breaking even worse, because the world's Heart had no chance of being in good shape right now, but they knew it had to be stable enough to not fall to the Darkness yet. And if Sora could get past the ridiculous amounts of heartless and just lock the keyhole already, that would at least buy them some time to figure out what to do about the remainders of Hollow Bastion. That and helping the Princesses of Heart. In the middle of everything that's been going on, Sora had almost forgotten that they would likely be awake right now and wandering around. Or, um, she certainly hoped they were awake and wandering around and not munched by the heartless or something. That wouldn't be too good.

And Ansem would likely still be skulking around here too. With Riku's body.

Sora shivered before casting the strongest electricity spell she could, enough to dispel most of the heartless in a small radius and give the trio some room to breathe before more approached. "We gotta forget about these guys and get to the keyhole," She told Donald and Goofy as she broke into a run to get to the chamber beyond. "We're taking up way too much time just dealing with these things, how has the keyhole not been breached yet? It's been, what, six days or so since we were here last?"

"Six," Goofy confirmed as he followed behind, his shield tightly held in hand. "I'm not sure how nothin's happened yet either!"

"Cid and Leon and the rest of them sure took their sweet time to get ready," Donald huffed. His much shorter legs made it a struggle for him to keep up with her and Goofy, and he lagged behind somewhat. "His gummi ship looks ridiculous with all that stuff stuck on it now. And he didn't need to upgrade that awful flamethrower _again!_ "

Sora did her best to disguise her snort as a coughing fit, but she could feel Donald's eyes narrow at the back of her head.

As they began to reach the exit of the tunnel into the chamber, Goofy said, "It was nice to have the break, though, Donald. Especially after running all over the place for a month and Sora getting turned into a heartless— _Ah-yipe!_ "

At an enormous crashing noise from the approaching exit of the tunnel, the trio quickly flattened themselves against the wall as best they could, and watched with matching gapes as a vast heartless stomped past towards the other end into the ruined chapel. Several smaller—though still quite large compared to any they've ever faced—heartless followed behind.

And not a single one cast so much as a glance to the trio or Sora's keyblade.

What just happened?

"Um," Sora trailed off after another moment's pause.

"They didn't even look at us?" Donald questioned.

"Should we go after them? I don't want Kairi or the gang to get steamrolled."

"Well," He looked back and forth between the ends of the tunnel before settling on the side that led into the chamber. "We should seal the keyhole first."

"And make sure The Beast and the Princesses of Heart are alright," Goofy reminded.

"After six days of heartless like that and Ansem lurking around here?" Sora squirmed slightly as they continued on. "I'm not sure even we could last that long. And some of them have probably been asleep for, like, a decade according to what Kairi heard."

Donald began to squirm at that too. "Hopefully things will work out—"

"OH, THANK ALLAH! THEY'RE HERE!"

At Jasmine's rallying cry as the trio exited the tunnel, they saw the rest of the assembled Princesses of Heart give similar cheers. A strange white barrier that had been erected before the swirling archway dissipated almost instantly as the Princesses gathered around. Sora noticed they all looked exhausted to varying degrees, and saw The Beast slouched over in one corner of the room tiredly lifting his head up to look to them as one young woman, whom Sora presumed was Belle, tended to his wounds. Donald broke off from Sora and Goofy to hurry over and cast a healing spell.

Meanwhile, Sora was practically getting mobbed.

"Thank goodness!" Alice gushed. "It's so good to see you three again! Although, it is rather displeasing that we must meet again under such dreadful circumstances, especially considering our introductions in court."

"Sora, Donald, and Goofy, was it?" Jasmine asked as she held out a hand. "I saw you in the market square that day, but I don't think we've ever formally met. It's nice to finally meet you."

Sora and Goofy both shook her hand as another young woman spoke up close by, wearing a silvery dress with her blonde hair in an updo fastened with a matching headband. She curtsied. "I'm Cinderella. I do apologize for our assistance to Ansem and Maleficent, though unwitting as it was; I hadn't ever imagined we would have the capability to not only open a world's keyhole, but to forge a new one!"

"Hey, I've heard of you! The Fairy Godmother told me she was worried about you," Sora said, before the rest of what Cinderella said registered. "Wait, so is that thing not Hollow Bastion's keyhole? What is it?"

"A monstrosity," Jasmine answered. She glanced with a hard squint to the far side of the room where the archway laid in wait, just out of sight up on the dais. "But from what we've been able to tell, it's still this world's keyhole. On top of being something else. Maleficent and Ansem must have done something unspeakable to the keyhole in its original form for it to become such a thing—Darkness keeps pouring out of it and it's attracting heartless."

Sora looked back towards the entrance she and Donald and Goofy had come in from and thought back to the heartless that walked right past her. "We saw a few coming in here. They ignored us."

Jasmine nodded. "Not a minute before you arrived we all felt a great beacon of Light coming from somewhere outside the citadel, and it was enough to lure the creatures away. To be honest, I'm a little thankful for it," She added sheepishly. "Belle's companion was on his last leg, and we weren't able to hold up the barrier we'd made for much longer. None of us have any experience with what we can do, and we only figured out how to make that barrier together by accident. We didn't even know we were any different from anyone else until…well. Until we were captured," Jasmine finished with a dark expression. "And used for such terrible things."

To that, Sora wasn't sure what to say beyond, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. None of this was your fault," Jasmine replied, and every one of the Princesses of Heart nodded in agreement. "Ansem and Maleficent would have found a way to get what they wanted no matter what. Them and people like them will always exist, but it's up to people like you and I to stop them."

"And Maleficent's been stopped already, I think," Alice speculated. "None of us could sense her Darkness at all. Even Snow White couldn't feel anything."

"That's right," Sora perked up. "She turned into a dragon somehow—Kairi said she thought Ansem had something to do with that—and we defeated her. We came back to help you guys and stop Ansem."

"It's not just Ansem we should worry about now," The Beast growled as he shuffled toward the group, Donald and Belle by his side. "Someone wearing a hooded coat came in here a day after what happened. I ordered him not to come closer, and he continued to walk without any response. I tried to stop him, yet my claws went through him as though he were made of air."

"He breached the barrier we made, too," Belle supplied. "He walked right past the barrier when even the heartless couldn't, and said nothing to anyone. All he did was walk up the stairs to the keyhole and inspect it for a few minutes before leaving."

…Well. _That_ was definitely weird. And more than a little bit concerning.

The trio all shared a look at that, and Sora knew exactly what they were thinking, for she was thinking the same: Before Ansem had possessed Riku and transformed his appearance first from that black costume from his normal clothes, and then managed to overtake his body entirely and appear like an older man with tanned skin and long white hair, according to Kairi's account, he had first appeared as a sort of misshapen lump wearing a brown hooded robe. Was that what Belle and The Beast were describing?

"That must have been Ansem," Donald said. "He looked like that at one point."

But they shook their heads.

"When the keyhole formed that new pattern," Cinderella recalled, "Ansem became ensconced with Darkness and appeared to step into it. When he did, the archway went back to how it must have looked before it activated—I couldn't sense Ansem's Darkness afterward. He's gone far, far away from here, I'm sure. But Ansem's Hearts were recognizable in an instant. His Darkness as well."

"I couldn't forget that Darkness if I tried," Snow White shivered.

"Indeed," Belle agreed. "Whomever that man was that walked right past us didn't have a speck of Darkness in him. Nor Light, for that matter."

"A Heart with no Darkness or Light?" Goofy pondered.

"No," Jasmine corrected. "He didn't have a Heart at all."

* * *

 **SORA**

 _Day Six_

 _No Heart at all? Sora could only blink at that before turning back towards the dais up above. So not only was there yet another weirdo wandering around here that they had to investigate, but Ansem was gone too after doing something crazy to the keyhole. Where did Ansem go? Was he still using Riku's body? Sora could feel her Heart give a pang at the thought._

 _Yeah, okay, Sora could admit it now, at least in her head if not out loud: Riku really was being kind of a turd for a while if what Kairi said was true, but he didn't deserve_ that.

 _But beyond the matters of him and Ansem, this new hooded man was an enigma. Was he still around? Did he know anything about the keyhole? How could he get past the barrier? And he had no Heart whatsoever?_

 _She sighed. Her head was beginning to hurt from all the questions._

" _Alright, let me seal the keyhole up there super quick, and you guys can tell us all about it, okay?"_

The trio had wandered through what must be every floor in the citadel, and ended up crossing off every one on their search for the hooded man. And now, without any further ideas, they decided to head for the basement. Sora figured it would make sense—bad guys usually had dark, depressing underground lairs of some sort in all the movies and shows. The only exception with that with Maleficent was that she had had an entire citadel at her disposal, but on second thought Sora supposed that was just as fitting. And her heartless could stand in for evil henchmen.

At least thinking of them as evil henchmen in a show was a lot easier to stomach than the reality that they were _people._ Trapped. Hearts that were slowly disappearing from the onslaught of Darkness and forgetting everything dear to them.

Sora knew that pain personally now. More than just watching it secondhand from seeing that man back in Traverse Town, in the very beginning, succumbing to the heartless' attack. She wrenched her eyes shut against unbidden recollections of the pain, but it didn't work.

" _Kairi, how did you do that?" She asked one night after their long day's work of fixing gummi ships and Kairi's practice. "How did you save me from being a heartless?"_

" _I'm not sure," Kairi looked down at her fingertips and Sora watched as she picked at the hem of her bedsheets in their hotel room. "I looked into your Heart and remembered what it looked like when it was whole, and just kind of reached for the missing pieces somewhere inside of me. Beyond that, I don't know how I did it."_

 _Kairi had told her about her month in Sora's Heart; The odd dreamlike version of the play island that comprised of Kairi's whole world for a month, and the sleeping boy on the pale throne (whose peculiar Heart Kairi said she didn't see in Sora anymore, and neither of them wanted to think on the ramifications of such a thing). How Kairi obsessively put together the clues of what was going on around them before even Sora and her friends could figure it out. The warring of Hearts within Xehanort and Riku's descent into the Dark._

 _And she had told Sora about how she never lost hope in her, no matter how desperate the situation seemed. No matter how logical it would be to try finally giving up at times when the odds were a million to one. All because of her grandmother's old story of hope, and the belief that if anyone could pull it off, Sora could._

 _And Sora had, but not without paying the price. A price that Kairi was somehow, miraculously, able to pay without penance. As far as they knew._

" _What did it feel like on the other side?" Kairi bit her lip and pulled at a stray thread on the bedsheet. "Being a heartless?"_

" _I," Sora tried, and her first response died on her tongue as a chill tiptoed up her spine. She wanted to pretend that it was fine. That everything was awesome and totally okay and nothing had changed. But that wasn't true, and judging by the look on her face Sora knew Kairi knew that too._

 _Sora had always been good at pretending everything was okay. She brought the cheer, right? Highwind ran on happy faces, and Sora was good at putting on a happy face. But the moment she thought back to those two terrifying days as a heartless, Sora lost her ability to breathe for a second and felt a small pebble of something flicker and die deep inside her. Something that went grey as ash and splintered off to fall deep below into an ocean she didn't know existed within herself. She blinked rapidly against the beginnings of tears and noticed Kairi had begun to look deeply concerned._

"… _Was it that terrifying?" Kairi asked in a hushed tone. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked, I—"_

" _No! No, no, it's okay," Sora mentally scolded herself that it wasn't that bad, really, it was okay, Kairi had faced so much worse for a whole month, Sora was being stupid for getting caught up in her own pain when a survivor was sitting right there in front of her. "I'm fine. Everything's chill, it's cool. I don't mind you asking, really."_

 _Highwind runs on happy faces. Sora breathed in._

" _It was kind of terrifying, not gonna lie," She crossed her arms and hunched over slightly. "But it wasn't anything like what you went through. Instead of not being able to move or do anything and be consciously watching stuff like you were, it was more like, um, like I was myself but also not. Like I was me but with something really wrong, but I couldn't figure out what it was, and I was falling and falling through this Dark hole and the further I fell into it the more I forgot. I couldn't remember my mom's name or her voice, and then I couldn't remember yours. I couldn't remember Riku's. And then I couldn't remember home. And the whole time I kept feeling that sense that something was wrong even beyond all of that but I couldn't figure out what it was."_

" _Sora, that's terrible," Kairi murmured. "I'm so sorry."_

 _She bit back the reflexive 'it's okay' at the last second with the thought that if she said that, then she'd unwittingly be saying that Kairi and Riku and her mother being forgotten by her were acceptable. And it wasn't. If spoken without thought, words that were meant to be reassurance could quickly become an insult. And so, without anything else she could think of to say instead, Sora decided to keep going._

" _I forgot a lot more than that," She continued quietly. "I forgot more than I can even think of, and even though I'm pretty sure I remember everything now I'm still scared that there might be something small that slipped away entirely."_

 _Sora bit back the sudden onslaught of a shuddering fear so voraciously that she knew she'd hurt her tongue, and thought_ I don't want to forget. _Anything but that._

And Sora knew she would never forget her time as a heartless, even though it was the one thing she wished she could. But _Highwind_ ran on happy faces, and Sora clung onto that sentiment as a lifeline for now.

That, and the idea that as a heartless, instead of painstakingly remembering her suffering and the slow icy creep of forgetting, it was much easier to think of it as her being a henchman for a couple of days. Like how Riku literally was with Maleficent, except he didn't become a heartless. Maybe? She wasn't sure, but he definitely had his Heart overtaken by Xehanort's somehow and was trapped.

The trio was coming up on the basement now (or technically coming down, she supposed). Sora figured they were getting close by the increasing scent of mildew. Gross. But at least it worked as a distraction.

"So, uh," Goofy wondered as they walked down to the distant rusted doors to the basement. "I was thinkin', could that Darkness the Princesses were sensing from real far away have somethin' to do with the stars going out that King Mickey talked about in his letter? The one telling me and you to go find the keyblade, Donald?"

Such was what Aurora had told them of, a Darkness she and the other Princesses of Heart could feel from unfathomably far off of equally unimaginable strength. None of them were able to pinpoint where it was, other than that it was definitely somewhere off-world. Perhaps even far from any other worlds the trio had explored so far. Sora knew Kairi had mentioned the same thing before they left Traverse Town, that she was sensing some sort of a Darkness at the edge of her awareness not unlike what she had felt in the last few days of Destiny Islands.

Donald made a disagreeing sound. "We know why the stars were going out now, though. Because of the heartless trying to go after the unsealed keyholes."

"Yeah," she spoke up. "But you'd think that by going world to world and keeping them from going out would have us cross paths with the king at some point if he was doing the same thing," _And my mom,_ Sora thought. Every world they encountered she'd had the same hope of finally finding her again, and every time so far she'd come up empty-handed. "But what if the reason we haven't seen him was because he was investigating something else? Maybe Goofy's right, and that Darkness might have something to do with everything that's been happening all along and the king knows it?"

"Like how Maleficent was the one we thought was behind everything, but it turned out Ansem was too?" Donald asked.

She took a moment to think on that as she reached for the door handle and swung it open, making a metallic whine as it did so. Their footsteps went sloshy from the wet floor, and Sora wrinkled her nose as the moldy smell got a hundred times stronger. This place was giving Monstro's stomach a run for its munny in terms of disgustingness. Wait, was that a real word? Sora figured she shouldn't get distracted with that thought in favor of way more important stuff right now.

Like the fact that the basement was completely empty as well.

Sora groaned at the complete absence of any spooky people wearing hoods. "Are you kidding me?"

She stomped towards the center of the clearing and scrutinized the pronounced lack of anyone to be seen aside from Donald and Goofy. The basement was divvied off into individual 'rooms' through a series of rusted grates that ranged between open and closed, and Sora could see where it appeared as though a series of them were caved in entirely as if something vicious had attempted to bust its way through to something. On the farthest wall a ways away, barely lit aside from the occasional torch on the wall crackling with dim flames, she could see the outlines of where some sort of pipework and archway had once been.

"We've walked up and down this entire place for this guy," Sora huffed, "He could at least show up so we can get a move on. Kairi might need our help out there."

"Gawrsh, we must've looked through every room in this here castle," Goofy said as she continued to scan the area. Maybe he was hiding in the shadows or something?

Beyond the dripping sound from close by the trio, as the last echoes of the door's creaking ebbed into quiet, Sora could hear a staccato of noise that sounded exactly like television static from somewhere behind the trio. She turned.

All three of them gave a start as the noise was revealed to be a man exactly fitting The Beast's and the Princesses' description standing before them. His black leather boots made splashing footfalls as he approached.

"Who are you?" Sora asked, but he did not respond.

Donald stamped a foot as he made no introduction nor remark. "Hey! Was that you earlier? With the Princesses of Heart and the keyhole?"

But his silence went on, and the man continued to walk towards her. He was getting close, now, and Sora couldn't stop her flinch as she made to move out of his path. Something about this man was inherently unsettling.

But she didn't get out of the way in time and in the next instant she realized that it was probably pointless to bother trying to move at all. Because the man walked right through her as if she was a ghost. Exactly like how Kairi had flown right through her that night the islands fell.

The noise of television static roared in her ears and Sora felt as though she had begun to fall down a long, Dark tunnel. She couldn't hear Donald and Goofy past the onslaught of memories that raced before her eyes, almost too fast to register before one was replaced with another.

— _"No problem. We can do anything when we're together!"_ _—_

— " _Good. Whatever happens, you will always a place with us."_ _—_

— " _Then I promise to protect you too." She vowed. "And then the necklace will remind both of us."_ _—_

— " _Hey! Who are you? Where did you come from? What was that flash? Where are your mom and dad?"_ _—_

— "… _I love you, mom."_ _—_

— " _I promise." —_

 _— So don't forget: You are the one who will open the door. —_

 _Sora hadn't realized she'd fallen to the ground until her vision cleared. The television static noise had by now died down to a chittering hum that followed the man, and she drunkenly raised her head to see Donald and Goofy bent over her with obvious worry._

 _"—oah! What happened?" Goofy shook her shoulder and peeked out from behind his half-raised shield to anxiously peek at the man, who was now doing nothing more than watching the trio._

 _"C'mon, say something, please," Donald pleaded as he shook her other shoulder with his free hand, his staff crackling with electricity that seemed to be intended for the man in case of attack. Either that or he was reserving it to give her a bit of a shock to wake her up if she hadn't come to by herself, Sora inwardly joked._

She mustered up a shaky grin as she looked Donald in the eye, trying to look more composed than she felt. "Something."

Goofy chortled with relief as Donald squinted at her before relenting, "Alright, very funny," he then turned to the man and raised his staff slightly. "Now who are you? What do you want?"

Sora got to her feet and summoned her keyblade to her hand, just in case. She couldn't see the man's face, but the slight movement of his head let her know that he was studying the keyblade.

"Ah," He said. His voice was deep enough to echo through the basement, and it only made his presence even more ominous. "It seems you are one of the chosen, too."

What did he mean by that? "What?"

"Ansem?" Goofy guessed. Sora supposed the guess made sense, with how Kairi said Ansem had changed his appearance at the end of their last visit. But the Princesses and The Beast had said otherwise. Maybe he decided to go back to something similar to his original robe with this black full-length coat and return to Hollow Bastion?

But the man shook his head. "That name rings familiar," He chuckled. "But I am not who you are thinking of. Yet one could say there is an echo of understanding in your statement that is parallel to the truth."

Wait, so was this guy Ansem or not? "What's that supposed to mean?"

At that, the man turned away from them to raise his hand towards empty space, and Sora could see their surroundings seem to distort and ripple around his fingertips and trail his movement. Exactly like the air rippling off of a road in the hottest days of summer. And then, once the man moved his outstretched arm in a circular motion, a Dark portal formed.

Once he finished, he kept his arm raised in a gesture for them to go through.

"It means," He said, "That I have something to show you. Come."

The trio shared an uncertain glance before following him through the portal, and they found themselves stepping out onto the upper floor of Hollow Bastion's library. Compared to the rest of Hollow Bastion's torn-up state, excepting the chamber where the Princesses of Heart were originally imprisoned, the library was rather untouched. Sure, there was the occasional claw mark on the wall here and there, and long gashes trailed down one section of the floor, and a weird pipe hung out of the ceiling and put off naked sparks, but not a single book was missing from the room's polished shelves.

"You remind me of him somewhat," The man said as he approached the desk stationed by the railing. On its surface was a single lamp and a quill in an inkwell, and numerous papers. Once they got closer, Sora's eyes widened when she saw it was all of the Ansem Reports they had collected so far and then some, likely assembled in their entirety. And judging by the gasps on either side of her, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy saw them as well. "The Ansem you seek—In that neither of you are whole, yet both of you are curious."

She had no idea of what he was talking about. Ansem, Seeker of Darkness? Or King Ansem the Wise? How wasn't she whole? Sora figured she might as well just ignore what he was saying.

"Hey, look," Donald nudged her and pointed to one Ansem Report, numbered the eighth in the series.

One passage in particular caught her eye: _'_ _As a start, I have built a device that artificially creates Heartless. By recreating the conditions that spawn the Heartless naturally, I should be able to produce them artificially. This device is the culmination of all my research thus far. The machine's test run successfully created a Heartless.'_

Sora studied the Ansem Report again, her eyes combing the handwriting, the letterhead. _H.R.M. King Ansem the Wise._ The apprentices' names written neatly below with King Ansem's signature and seal at the bottom. The paper itself was clearly somewhat aged, compared to the copies she and Donald and Goofy had been collecting, and beginning to yellow around the edges.

Sora gripped her keyblade tightly enough for her fingertips to turn white as her mind spun with the implications of those words. Kairi had told them she remembered Apprentice Xehanort, who now called himself Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, was the one behind all of the experiments. That all of the apprentices were complicit. That the true Ansem had told them to stop once things were beginning to go too far, according to Apprentice Even's words at one point.

And Kairi had also told them that Apprentice Xehanort had stolen parts of King Ansem's identity in his efforts to continue his experiments without the king's knowing, culminating in his taking the name 'Ansem'. But then that raised the question—When had Apprentice Xehanort done that? Was it before the king's supposed death? After? And before King Ansem had forbidden the experiments, how far had they gone before he told them to stop?

…Could it have been _both_ King Ansem and Apprentice Xehanort behind this whole mess?

Sora thought back to the heartless emblem she had seen on almost all of the creatures they'd encountered so far. That heart-like shape that ended at three points, crisscrossed with the thorned vines. Was that done by the king of Radiant Garden? The king whose research they were searching for to try and save the worlds, had actually had a hand in trying to end them?

" _So, like," Sora kicked her heels back and forth as she helped Cid reconnect some tubes to the nitro tank before he applied the fancy stuff he had to seal the ends. Or at least, she thought it was nitrous because that was the only word she could pick out when he listed off all the fuel his gummi ship needed to fly after a decade in storage. Nitro-methie-sili—never mind. "If King Ansem was super smart and had proven it to get the name 'The Wise' and all that, why would anyone bother calling him dumb if they knew better?"_

 _Cid shrugged. "'Cause they didn't know better. Or at least, they wanted to feel smart themselves even if it made them seem crazy to everyone else. The people who said that he was 'King Ansem the Foolish' were usually either the crabbiest folks you ever met who talked bad about everyone, or more often the tinfoil-hat type who believed in all sorts of crazy stuff even if it was completely wrong."_

" _Tinfoil-hat?"_

" _Loonies," Cid said offhandedly, "Weirdos. The types who entertained a lot of crazy ideas if it made them feel like they knew something nobody else knew. But funnily enough, they were the very first ones to sound the alarm on the stuff going on in the castle and the unversed. And the heartless."_

" _What? Really?"_

" _Yep. That's why I thought it was fake at first and didn't leave at the first whiff of trouble," He sighed. "I regret that now. But the crazies went on about some insider with the apprentices telling them about a lot of the research being less than well-intentioned. And the same folks said that the king had something to do with it."_

If King Ansem the Wise had a role in the experiments, even a small one…

But before she could think on the matter further, the man withdrew a paper from his pocket and unfolded it, and stared at it as he said distantly, "I've been to see the boy. The resemblance between you two is remarkable for all your differences."

Sora glared as she raised her keyblade just slightly in warning, and she could hear Donald and Goofy readjust their grips on their weapons as well. "Tell us who you are. Now."

"I'm what's left," He replied as he put down the paper, and the trio could see it was another Ansem Report missing from the lineup, numbered the thirteenth. Compared to the others, this one was less aged, though not as new-looking as the copies the trio had collected. Sora was hesitant to look away from the man as she stole a glance at the contents of the new report.

It had the same letterhead, the same seal. The same names. The same everything, save for its contents; ' _A being that is neither darkness nor light; belonging nowhere; abandoned by its Heart; a mere shell of its former self.'_

"Or," The man finished, "Maybe I'm all that there ever was."

"I meant your name!"

"Yeah, are you Ansem or not?" Donald demanded.

The man said nothing as he raised his arm again, and a Dark portal started to form. Sora lunged.

"No, no, no!" She shouted as he began to step through and she made to follow. Sora didn't look to see if Donald and Goofy were going to follow as well, and if they didn't then she'd do this alone if she had to. This man was a threat, whoever he was. "You are not going to get away that easily!"

Sora nearly crashed onto the floor when she leapt out of the portal and wrenched her head around to try and recognize her new surroundings. There wasn't much evidence of where they were, but Sora had a feeling they were still in the citadel of Hollow Bastion, judging by the tiny motif of thorned vines crawling around the top of the walls. The rest of the room was oddly empty compared to everywhere else they'd seen so far. Was this some sort of a training room?

But before she could think on it more, a flash of light caught her eye as the television static noise roared back to life, and Sora barely raised her keyblade in time to defend from a blast of lightning coming from the man's hand.

This was no ordinary lightning, she realized with a grunt as she continued holding on against the onslaught. Normal lightning shuddered and shrieked and spluttered out after only a second. Normal lightning didn't keep going, and it didn't sound like _this,_ like the shuddering wail of an old could barely hear Donald and Goofy arriving and readying themselves for a fight past the racket.

She summoned a burst of strength to slash her keyblade out and go on the offence, and when she did there was a _fwing!_

It was the lightning, cast away entirely. It ricocheted away from them all as it hit the vaulted ceiling, and the room rumbled ominously with the attack. Sora felt small pebbles bounce off of her head and clatter to her feet as the man raised one gloved hand to push back his hood, and she saw silver hair tumble out onto his shoulders as he turned his golden eyes onto them with a detached air.

"I am nothing," The man said as the noise of television static started again. "I am nobody."

In his hands burst forth two glowing rays, red and crackling. He wielded them like swords.

"But if you must call me something," He went on, "Then call me Xemnas."

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _Day ?_

It was Mickey that noticed the sand first.

When he'd pointed out the patches of sand that had been kicked up after yet another fight with heartless, Riku looked back and saw spare ferns hiding in the corners of the bedrock that made up this place. And then a palm tree. And then another.

And that's when Riku saw light peeking out from what looked to be a cave opening on up ahead, bathing all of the barren rocks and crystal growths in its glow. He got a twisting feeling deep in his stomach at the sight, and he couldn't tell whether the feeling was one of longing or of distress. Riku knew it in his Heart what all the signs meant, where they were _from_ , but he was scared to know it for certain.

He hadn't realized he began to run towards the light until Aqua and Mickey both shouted for him to come back. Riku kept running.

 _"Balance, Riku. It's what I've been telling you all along. Cede only just enough to the Dark and it will be a boon, but too much makes for a bane instead. A world succumbed to the Darkness in whole is of no use to anyone but the heartless."_

 _After his time in the depths of the Realm of Darkness even the faintest light nearly blinded him, and the overwhelming rays of sunlight that poured down on him now made his eyes burn madly. He wrenched them shut as he continued to run, and heard his footsteps change from plodding echoes on stone to the all too familiar muffled scrunch on sand. The ocean waves roared in his ears, and Riku both relished and regretted the cacophony of home._

 _But once his eyes painfully adjusted, Riku realized he regretted it so much more, for what once was home was now split apart._

 _He had come out onto the play island, and the first thing he saw was that past the endless ocean there were no other islands in sight. No rows of houses nor rise of trees, not even a brief crescent sandbar rising above the waves. The second thing he saw, barely in time to catch himself before he unwittingly leapt off the edge of it, was the Dark scar left by his work._

 _Riku felt a sickening sliding feeling in his chest as he stood and looked around the remainders of the play island: All of the platforms and walkways and shacks that had been there were almost entirely destroyed, with only the outermost shack by the waterfall and the one high up on the small cliff-face remaining, connected by the ramshackle boardwalk that was now splintered apart in two. It gave a shuddering groan as it swayed dangerously in the breeze. Blackened shapes dotted the formerly idyllic landscape like malignant growths._

 _He sank to his knees on the precipice and raised his face towards the sun, but felt no warmth from it. Riku could hear Aqua and Mickey walk up behind him._

 _"Maleficent really was telling the truth," He mumbled weakly. Riku gathered some sand in his palm and watched trails of it fall to the churning waves down below. At the time, he had initially thought it was another lie just like all the rest, albeit a particularly concerning one seeing as he soon found he couldn't make a Dark portal to the islands when he had tried back before everything went terribly wrong. Before Sora…he couldn't bear to think about it._

 _No,_ _he reminded himself. He couldn't run from the truth anymore. Maleficent wasn't lying and Sora was dead. Two impossibilities that had now come to pass. Sora was dead and a piece of Riku had died with her._

 _Sora was dead and Riku wished the rest of himself would die already too._

 _There was a_ _scrunch_ _sound as Aqua and Mickey sat down on either side of him, and Riku felt a soft flutter against his forehead as Aqua gently brushed away his bangs from his eyes. He looked up at her from his spot on the cliffside._

"What?"

Her expression as she looked at him now was easily recognizable. if Riku were in any other mood, if he hadn't then felt lower than he'd ever been in his life, he would have been resentful of the pity that was plain to see. It was a look he'd gotten all his life from adults that should have known better, who figured out more about his home life than he did until he wised up enough to understand that his version of 'normal' wasn't necessarily anyone else's version. It was that pity that had so often said _I feel sorry for you, but I won't do anything to help._

But he was at rock bottom—no, deeper than rock bottom. Riku was now at Realm of Darkness bottom, because of course he had managed to sink lower than whatever low was possible—and Riku couldn't bring himself to be angry anymore. Not at anyone else other than himself.

And the longer he looked without the usual reflexive anger at any trace of pity clouding his perception, the more Riku realized Aqua didn't seem to be looking at him with any pity at all. Rather, it was more empathetic. There was a knowing glint in her eyes.

"I know you were very young when I visited the islands myself," Aqua said. "But do you remember when I came? Do you remember the promise I had Sora make?"

He remembered, alright. Riku had come very close to forgetting several times over the years until now, having written the whole thing off as just some weird blue-haired lady spouting off nonsense. But it had been Sora that always asked about the incident sooner or later, saying, _"Hey, I didn't dream that, did I? She was really here?"_

At the mention of Sora, Riku felt sick all over again. His eyes sank back down to the waves far below.

"Yeah."

 _The day had been as long as any other, and just as enjoyable. To the two kids, time felt as though it had sped by and remained steadfastly in place, in that pleasant paradox of summer days that neither had ever wanted to end._

 _Perhaps others were there, or perhaps they were not. The distant din of their friends and their faces had been lost to the years, but in the end Riku always remembered the day consisted of him, Sora, and that blue-haired woman on the same shore the oddly dressed man had stood not too long prior. Only a scarce few months, in fact. Around his neck, Riku's sparkling new necklace held that same comforting weight as the oath in his Heart. It would be some time before that fateful meteor shower marked Kairi's mysterious arrival on Destiny Islands._

 _Riku couldn't remember very well as to what he and Sora were doing before the blue-haired woman arrived—maybe they were embroiled in a spar, or another race. Maybe it didn't matter, or maybe it did. The simple fact of it was that it would be some time yet before destiny came for the children as it does for us all._

 _But the funny thing about destiny is that we rarely understand the face it presents itself to us in—whether that face be of an oddly-dressed man with a key in search of a pupil to follow his feats and failures (the latter unwittingly so), to forge a path greater than his own (or to follow him straight to the depths of Darkness beyond even the reach of love). Or to have the face of a woman, blue-haired and proud, in search of someone to take the promise to not let history repeat itself._

 _(Such is the tragedy of destiny; We rarely know it when it walks right up to us, but we always know it when it walks away.)_

 _But today, destiny watched them from the face of a woman Riku would later come to know as Master Aqua, sitting on the pier above and studying them as they ran by. And Riku, not recognizing the woman but recognizing the strangeness in her attire, slowed down and nearly collapsed into the sand as he crossed the underside of the pier that comprised their agreed finish line. He had won the race. Beside him, Sora outright flopped into the sand with a groan when she realized she'd lost this time._

" _One more time," She insisted with her face still planted into the ground. Sora raised a finger, saying, "One more race, you got lucky—huh?"_

 _Riku hadn't given a response to her challenge but had nudged her in the side to get her attention, and to covertly point out the woman who was now watching them. At that, Sora lifted her head entirely out of the sand and cautiously stood up to watch her right back._

 _When the woman realized they had spotted her, her mien alternated between bashful and amused at the children's intrigue, and she took a graceful leap off of the pier to land on the shore right in front of them._

That _had taken the children by surprise for sure. Such a move from that kind of height looked like the sort of thing one would never find in real life, only in fiction. Out of the corner of his eye, Riku saw Sora draw back and give an exclamation of surprise, but when he turned she had already done her best to act unperturbed before he could see for sure._

 _The woman studied them closely at that, and her bashfulness subsided to make way for twofold amusement instead. She seemed to have recognized something in the two of them, but what?_

" _So you're the one he chose, huh?" The woman said._

 _Riku got the feeling she was talking about him, but he wasn't sure. "What do you mean?"_

" _I—" Her brows furrowed slightly at this as her mouth snapped shut, and the woman scrunched her eyes shut as she gave a seemingly confused shake of her head before trying again. "Nothing, sorry. I didn't mean anything at all. I was just being silly."_

 _Sora and Riku shared a puzzled glance at this. The woman cleared her throat._

" _So, you two mind telling me your names?"_

" _Oh! Ooh!" Sora absolutely loved meeting new people, friendly as she was, and this time was no exception. Riku didn't try to stifle his smile at the sight. "I'm Sora!"_

 _Momentarily distracted as he was, his answer came a little late, and he hurriedly added, "Riku."_

 _The woman's smile faltered around the edges as Riku watched her scrutinize him, undoubtedly seeing something he couldn't, and he was only more confused. What was going on? What was she thinking—_

 _The smile faltered even more into a look of pity, and Riku, young as he was, wasn't sure what to think or feel about that._

 _It was the same pity that is in the eyes of so many adults that knew him, that looked at him. And this was the first time he got it from a perfect stranger—someone he hasn't even properly_ met _—but there the woman was, pitying him too._

 _This was far from the first time that pity has confused him, but it was the first time that it angered him. Riku understood in that moment that he hated that look of pity. He hated that pity coming from everybody he knew, even the people he didn't. He hated that they looked upon him and found something weak, something vulnerable and small and unable to fight back. He hated that they looked upon him and saw something too close to the truth._

 _(But what Riku didn't realize then was that Aqua's pity for him was not for his past, but for his future: The mark Terra left on his Heart. The mark that has defined her life, and her loss of it. The mark that foretold of the sacrifice of a life lived in service where the person that lives it comes in second to the people they serve. The mark that meant the loss of freedom.)_

 _(For what matters the wants of the few in the face of the endangerment of many? Was it the height of nobility to forsake oneself in lifelong service to another, or needless self-flagellation if it ended impotently? To live as a person meant tiptoeing in a balance between both in the pursuit of happiness and fulfillment, but to live as a keyblade master meant abandoning the self entirely. Such was what Master Aqua would find soon enough.)_

 _A moment more passed as Riku was distracted with his own thoughts on what had passed unspoken between him and the strange woman, before he came out of his contemplation to find that her attention had turned to Sora._

"— _Sora, do you like Riku?"_

 _Another somewhat odd question. The way the woman asked it was almost plaintive, fearful. Why would she be afraid of Sora's answer? Why would she be worried?_

 _And Sora, completely oblivious to the woman's demeanor, was as excited now as when the woman had asked for her name. "Of course I like Riku, he's my best friend! We're together all the time and we do everything together, and he's really cool and knows lots of stuff and his hair is pretty too," Sora paused at this and pouted her mouth to one side as she pondered. Riku knew that was her thinking face. She added, "Last week we were at the park and he found this really shiny pinkish-whitish pebble. He gave it to me. That was cool of you too," Sora turned to Riku. "It's in my window at home so it looks super shiny in the sun. What did you call it again?"_

" _Rosy courts," Riku replied, pleased. His ire at the pity was completely set aside for now; Sora had said he was really cool. And that his hair was pretty._

" _Rose quartz?" The woman's eyes widened into a look of admiration and Riku could tell she had been relieved at Sora's reply, but once more Riku wasn't sure why she felt that way. Was rose quartz really special or something? "That's amazing. Hey, how did you find it?"_

 _Together he and Sora launched into the tale of their daring journey, replete with the initial exploration of a hole in the bushes they had discovered, which had turned out to be a top-secret gateway that was all dark and scary just like the secret place (though neither risked to tell her of that discovery) and surely beset with traps. And how, together, the two kids had made they way through safely to find a small creek on the other side, swirling with minnows and all sorts of rocks along its shores, including the fancy pebble Riku had found and given to her._

 _The woman listened to the whole thing attentively, and at the tale's conclusion she stood back up._

" _In that case, I've got a top-secret mission for you too, Sora," The woman winked, and Sora bounced on her toes at the words. "And the mission is: You gotta stick by Riku no matter what. If he starts getting lost, or maybe he starts wandering down a Dark, scary path, just like through those bushes, I need you to stay with him and keep him safe."_

 _"That's your job, Sora, and I'm counting on you to do it," The woman said as she ruffled Sora's hair with an affectionate smile. "Okay?"_

" _Okay," Sora grinned, and Riku could see a small gap in her smile where she had lost her first baby tooth. "I promise."_

That pebble. The little rose quartz had still sat in her windowsill ten years later up until the islands fell, still shining in the sun's light every morning. Sora hadn't moved it one bit in all that time. And when Riku had asked about it one day, about why she'd still bothered to keep it if it was just a simple little rock with no value that he'd given to her when he was five and she was four, all Sora had said then was _"Well, it was from you. That gives it value to me."_

And now that little pebble was lost to the Dark along with the rest of Sora's home. Along with Sora herself.

All because of Riku.

 _("I choose glory.")_

The weight of what he had done came crashing down on him once more, and the pebble may as well have weighed as much as a boulder for how completely it crushed his Heart beneath it. His mouth tasted like ashes, iron and sawdust mixing into something unbearable.

And that lone Dark corner of his mind, the little voice that had goaded him to so much since all of this began, no longer bayed for glory nor freedom nor any riches at all.

Instead, the Darkness within himself now whispered _Murderer. Murderer._

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _Day Six_

" _If this doesn't work," Cid grumbled once he had exited the hatch after Aerith, with an ornate miniature carriage stowed under his arm. "I'm gonna personally send you the bill for repairs to my old workshop, kiddo. A decade later and I come back to find it almost completely undamaged in all that time under Maleficent's rule, and just when I'm trying to gun down a whole herd of heartless that're hell-bent on making their way to its neighborhood, the dang comm sphere pings. You better know what you're doing."_

" _Cid," Aerith chided, "Things can be replaced or repaired. And she'll be calling the heartless away from your workshop anyhow."_

" _If this works," He reminded. "And some of that stuff can't be replaced! I've got equipment in there that would make even a moogle drool, can you imagine trying to replace a spline reticulator? How about a cruxtruder? 'Cause I sure can't."_

 _Cid set down the carriage as they started to debate the virtues of going right back up into the sky to save the workshop versus staying on the ground with the rest of their group to help fight the heartless directly, and Kairi picked it up to inspect it. It was just the same as it had looked through Sora's eyes back on that day in Merlin's residence, only right now it wasn't sparkling. How would Kairi get her attention?_

 _She could hear Yuffie sidle up to her. "You were handling that last mob pretty well, you know. If you're worried about not being able to do as much as you think you should, don't be: You've been at this for just four days. We've got you, 'kay?"_

 _As plucky and cavalier as Yuffie was, Kairi thought, she could be more perceptive than she let on. Or was her insecurity really that obvious?_

Be like Sora, _Kairi told herself._ Be like Riku—before he chose the Darkness, anyway. _She had to believe in herself and her convictions, and ignore her self-doubt. Have Hope. And most importantly, if nothing logical worked, then wing it. Try the craziest thing that came to mind._

 _And this was certainly a little crazy, though not terribly so (not like trying to leap off a building onto a dragon's back, anyway); Kairi had already done something like this once before, hadn't she? The only difference this time was that, instead of trying to recomplete a broken Heart, she would be sending it up like a flare._

 _Like a beacon._

 _Kairi gave a sly smile to Yuffie and said, "Thanks, Yuffie. Maybe I can handle the next one a little better."_

 _And then she knelt down to the carriage and gave a tentative knock on its door._

" _Miss Fairy Godmother?" Kairi asked, "I need your help."_

"My goodness," The Fairy Godmother's wand dimmed somewhat after casting the spell from both her and Kairi, though she still held it aloft at the distant oncoming thunder of heartless' feet. Around the group, all of the remaining heartless that had been in the immediate vicinity (scarce as they were) were eradicated by the magic, their Hearts spiraling away. "I would have been happy to help earlier if there's still as many heartless here as you say. I didn't only come along to reunite with Cinderella!"

Kairi swallowed back the old upswellings of fear at the sound of the heartless' rumbling. "We'll sure like your help here in a second," She chuckled weakly. "Everyone okay?"

Leon rubbed at his eyes. "I think I just went blind from that flare."

"Augh, agreed," Yuffie groaned as she did the same. "Didn't think I'd need my sunglasses today."

Meanwhile, Cid gave a whoop as he lifted his goggles back up onto his head.

"Good job, kid! Those things will definitely lay off on my shop now," He grinned and gave her a clap on the back. Kairi could almost see faint tan lines from where the goggles had been. Had the flare really been that bright? Cid then turned to Yuffie and Leon, and said, "You'll see, the fabrication tools alone're gonna come in handy as heck when the real work begins on this place. You two dolts should've saved those welding goggles I gave you."

"I lost them forever ago!" Yuffie protested. "I don't do all that techie stuff, I've never needed them."

"Would have been useful today," Leon acceded as he blinked away the last few stars in his eyes. "Right now, at least."

"You two will be doing a lot of that 'techie stuff' here soon, better find 'em."

The rumbling was coming closer, and to distract herself Kairi asked, "Real work?"

"We're not just here to reclaim our home," Cid explained. "We're here to repair it. Radiant Garden used to be just that—Radiant. Sure don't look radiant right now, but we're going to fix that. Shoot, maybe we can make it even better."

"Considering what Maleficent's done to the place," Leon replied. "We'll be doing good to get it back to just being radiant. Even counting Aerith piloting the gummi ship right now, there's not many of us here."

"We'll gather up the other remaining natives back in Traverse Town if today goes well," Cid said. "And figure out how to lead the efforts from there. We could even make a club. How does the name 'Radiant Garden Reconstruction Committee' sound?"

Leon made a contemplative hum as he mulled it over. "RGRC is a decent acronym. I don't mind the sound of it."

"It sounds great if I can be president," Yuffie decided.

"It'll sound greater if Yuffie _isn't_ president," Leon deadpanned.

"Then how about Supreme Leader? Or Empress? I'll even settle for Queen."

"…I'd almost prefer president."

"Ain't nobody is going to be president," Cid piped up. "No ranks needed, everyone's going to have an equal say."

"No ranks? Then how will I know who I can boss around?" Yuffie joked.

"You'll be busy enough to not have the time to boss anyone around. Won't be long before we're all too busy."

"I'll just have to make the extra time, then!"

Their banter died down as the thunder came closer, and Kairi bit her lip and tightened her grasp on the sword to resist the urge to curl up into a ball at the sound. She wasn't a powerless four years old alone in a dying world with no one but her grandmother anymore. The heartless weren't the enigmatic, seemingly undefeatable foes they were thought to be anymore. She wasn't alone even now.

But most of all, she wasn't powerless. She never had been, she knew now. All she needed to do was learn how to use the power she had all along.

And what better way of learning than through doing?

The thunder was closer yet, and the first few heartless just rounded the corner. She froze at the sight of the largest among them, a horned behemoth that galloped towards the team with its tusked maw open wide. Flame-like markings trailed down its sides as the heartless symbol blazed on its chest. It was by far the largest heartless she'd ever seen.

 _(As he floated down to the rubble below, Ansem said,_ _"All you need to do is open your Heart to the Darkness and allow her Heart to help lead us into everlasting night.")_

She tightened her grip enough to turn her knuckles white as paper and swallowed back her fear. And she thought to herself, _No._

 _I will not lead anyone into night. Not then, not now, and not ever._

She began to run towards the heartless with her sword raised. _I am Kairi, Princess of Heart. And that means that I am of the Light. That this time, I'll protect you. All of you._

And with those words in mind, Kairi lunged.

* * *

 **SORA**

 _Day Six_

Not for the first time this fight, Sora thought this entire scenario was ridiculous and more than a little needless; All of this fighting, the lasers and the forcefields and the whatever it was Xemnas was doing with that television static noise, just for a test of strength? A test of strength for what?

Keyblade met laser in a fizzling clash, and Sora could feel the skin of her arms begin to burn slightly more from how much heat Xemnas' weapons were giving off.

And not for the first time either in this fight, Sora thought of Kairi. Of how Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, was still somewhere out there and no doubt looking to target her again, along with all of the other Princesses of Heart. And finally, she thought how okay, yes, maybe Kairi was right and she was worrying too much. Maybe she needed to trust her to know how to handle herself. But if Ansem was still running around and he'd already managed to overtake Riku— _Riku,_ of all people. Yeah, it was done willingly, but that still felt impossible to Sora. Some part of her always thought of Riku as invincible, like someone half-myth and half-real, the same part of her that still was slow to acknowledge that Riku really had done all in the past month that Kairi said he'd done—and Sora couldn't afford to let Ansem take any more of her friends.

" _It'll never be the same between the three of us again, will it?"_

It would. No matter the cost, no matter what she had to do to ensure that.

The sound of television static grew to a seething screech as their struggle continued on, Donald helping as best he could with spell after spell on one side, Goofy pushing back against a forcefield on the other. Sora gritted her teeth and could feel her arms start to tremble.

This was getting far beyond a simple 'test of strength'. The trio had depleted their stock of potions entirely in the increasingly shorter breaks in the fight they had been able to catch, and the trio were littered with burn marks already. Another was beginning to hiss into being on Sora's forearm, closest to the lasers, and she could see her glove burn away and reform as its enchantment tried to repair it as fast as it was being destroyed.

No, this wasn't a test at all. There had to be something else about this he wasn't telling them.

Sora barely was able to fend off Xemnas' lasers and gain some distance to yell, "Look, I don't care about why you want to fight! I don't care about—about whatever crazy babble you keep spouting off about! This is getting ridiculous, I need to go find Ansem and stop him before it's too late!"

Xemnas' chuckle echoed off of the walls, and the television static lowered to a hum.

"You truly are but a child: Blind to the machinations that go on around you," He scanned the keyblade. "And yet there is so much power in your grasp that is unnoticeable to you. Wasted, even."

Blind to the what? Wasted?

Was this guy just another lunatic wanting the keyblade?

"Can you just start talking straight for once in your life?" She commanded.

"Yeah," Donald chimed in, his staff swirling with frost already. "And how did you have an Ansem Report?"

But Xemnas ignored him entirely, and took a moment too long to look back from the keyblade to Sora again. Compared to when Riku did the same on their last visit here, when he had looked almost hungry for the keyblade, Xemnas seemed…regretful? It was hard to tell for sure; the man was about as expressive as a rock.

"I've heard your quarry oft say the refrain, 'those who know nothing understand nothing,'" Indeed, Sora distinctly remembered Ansem tell her so back on that fateful day on Destiny Islands. "But I've found that in nothingness is where true power lies."

As if to accentuate his point, Xemnas dismissed the forcefield restraining Goofy with a flick of his wrist. The lasers faded from his grip and the noise of static died.

He raised his chin at them. "Is it then only in the minds of children and imbeciles that we may understand ourselves yet? That we may understand all that lies in between?"

Oh, that was _it._

Sora may have been exhausted to her bones, but she had enough anger and adrenaline left to leap. Her keyblade collided with a new forcefield that sprung up between them and Xemnas, and she whacked it with every word she spat out.

"How many times do I have to tell you people?!" _Clang! Chink!_ "I! Am! Not! A! KID! Or an idiot!"

Goofy and Donald joined in with staff and shield, but the shield deflected off the barrier and the magic only made a burning cold blast that left frost sprouting on the inside of it. "And we sure aren't dumb, either!" Goofy added.

Yet Xemnas was entirely unflustered by their display. If anything, he was amused, and that grated on Sora's last nerve even more. "But even from nothing can come something," He remarked. "And from something, nothing. But not today for the latter," He dismissed the forcefield and began to turn away from them. "You've yielded quite the interesting findings. This data will come in useful."

Sora bit back a noise of frustration. "Just start making sense already!"

"Did you see Ansem around here anywhere or not?" Donald squawked, and reared back his staff in preparation. At his question, Xemnas stopped.

"You speak of the heartless, I presume, for the regent has long since abdicated."

 _H.R.M. King Ansem the Wise._ The Ansem Reports.

Sora had a hunch that he wasn't telling the whole truth there.

"Heartless?" Goofy asked, as if echoing Sora's next thought. He lowered his shield.

Xemnas gave a nearly imperceptible nod as he began to move away again. "Heartless shall do what heartless do best. But Ansem always was so ambitious—I know it for myself. Even the Heart of one world is not enough for him."

 _("That's really all they want in the end, isn't it? Hearts?")_

The last traces of her anger died down as she finally understood.

 _It was past midnight as the trio, Kairi, and the rest of the crew were still huddled around that table in Cid's house talking over what had happened for the past month beyond what the trio alone had experienced. This time, Kairi was telling them about what Maleficent had told Riku, who in turn had told her._

" _And when he found the Princesses of Heart in that chamber, she talked to him about this—this all-powerful thing she was going to use the Princesses for," she described. "Beyond the Door there's a great Light that's connected to the Hearts in everything. It was called stuff like the Heart of all Hearts, the One True Light. But that everyone knew it by one name."_

"…Kingdom Hearts," Sora gasped.

Xemnas gave but one more nod as he raised his hand in midair, and Dark trails followed his fingertips.

"As I said, you hold much power in your grasp," A Dark portal formed, and Xemnas began to step through. "It is time you learn to use it in its entirety. Goodbye, Sora. We will meet again."

"Hey, wait—!" She reached for him before he could leave, but it was no use. The last dregs of the Dark portal disappeared and the trio was alone.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _Day Six_

She was exhausted. After the fight, it felt as though every muscle in her body was turned to jelly, and she knew the others had to be feeling the same way. But the feeling of gripping onto the cold brass handles of the citadel doors and walking into the old castle of Radiant Garden, knowing that now their home was safe with the heartless' defeat and the keyhole undoubtedly being locked by now, was a relief Kairi hardly could describe.

The fight, judging by the sun, hadn't actually taken terribly long. With Aerith using the weapons on Cid's gummi ship from above and The Fairy Godmother's assistance, the work of defeating every last heartless after the largest of them were felled had become a sort of rhythm—Even a little monotonous, if Kairi had dared to admit it. Parry, strike, and avoid getting hurt until the heartless was finished off. Move onto the next closest heartless and do the same. Repeat until every heartless was finished.

Having the fighting itself become monotonous, after the initial rush of panic, actually did much more to assuage her own fear than any words of encouragement, funnily enough: Monotony meant that Kairi knew what to do. It meant that she could handle it.

After a lifetime of not being particularly athletic, though, it was a little harder to handle how everything _hurt._ At least Kairi wasn't alone in feeling like jelly.

"Aa-a-argh!" Yuffie's legs were wobbling madly as she attempted to make her way up the steps to the front doors to the citadel where Aerith, Cid, and The Fairy Godmother stood, waiting. "Why did none of you guys warn me that there would be a stupid amount of stairs in this place?! Or a stupid amount of heartless? Why couldn't we just park our gummi ship next to Sora's and the guys' all the way up at the top of this stupid tall citadel and skip all this stupid, stupid walking?!"

"I already checked, there's no extra room in the old chapel," Aerith's eyes twinkled with amusement. "Otherwise we would. I'm not even sure how Donald had the space to turn around the gummi ship in there last time, or how he'll do it again."

"Should've kept up drills with us even after the heartless were kicked out of Traverse Town, Great Ninja," Leon, compared to Yuffie and Kairi, was only slightly winded, and was finishing making his way up the steps. "This exact scenario is why."

"I did," Yuffie protested. "I just didn't keep it up crazy often like you did! I figured there wasn't much of a point with no more heartless, I didn't imagine we'd ever be going back to this place until not even a week ago."

"You're right," Aerith said. She looked out over the courtyard and the citadel's outer walls. The withered flowerbeds and cracked masonry. The amused gleam in her eyes dimmed into something closer to nostalgia. "None of us ever really thought we even could go back, did we? It never felt real. It still doesn't feel real even now, like I'm still dreaming."

"Still feels like I'm in a dream to me," Leon agreed.

"Not to me," Cid grinned, and slung the strap of his now-empty flamethrower over his other shoulder. Compared to Aerith, whose sad nostalgia when she looked out over the remains of Radiant Garden made Kairi think she must be only seeing the destruction, Cid's palpable hopefulness clearly made him see something very different. "I never threw away the chip I saved the coordinates on. And I never forgot all the plans for rebuilding this place we came up with together when you guys were small."

"I thought you did that to distract us from losing our home?" Yuffie asked as she made her way up the last couple of steps.

"Partially, yeah," Cid nodded. "But I was serious about it. You still want that water slide that goes around the whole city?"

Yuffie paused at that, touched. "I asked for that when I was eight, though."

"If we've got the materials left over after all the essentials are covered, why not?"

She hesitated, and then bounced up the last step without any trouble to give Cid a hug. There were more than a few chuckles around the group at that—it seemed Yuffie wasn't actually that tired from fighting after all.

But the griping came right back when the group had to make their way up even more steps, this time to try and make their way to the chamber where the Princesses of Heart had been imprisoned. By now, Kairi figured, Sora must have had the keyhole locked, but that didn't account for the fact that Ansem was still around here somewhere. They would have to be ready for another fight.

The stairwells, compared to Kairi's escape last visit, were now lit up brightly by the noonday sun in uncharacteristic cheer compared to its perpetual sunset for so long before. Broken glass still crunched underfoot, torn wallpaper still clung fiercely to the walls, and cobwebs grazed at the group as they made their way up, but there was still a difference in it all even beyond The Fairy Godmother's minor spellwork in cleaning up as they went. For the sun had set and it had risen once more, and the decade-long _day of_ was now officially _the day after_. Kairi and her home had both made it through. They had both survived.

Now the only question was if everybody else had made it through too. Like everyone's families. Friends. Classmates.

Like her family, too.

— " _That's_ Apprentice _Lea, to you, dad," He said with a wily grin, and did a twirl in his new uniform. "Me and Isa have officially joined the geek squad now. Benefits include no longer getting thrown out on our as—um, butts when we're caught snooping."_ —

 _Expect the worst, hope for the best,_ she reminded herself. It was easier now with all the practice she'd had with hoping over the past month. And with how well today was going.

As they continued to make their way up the stairs, memories still gleamed at the corners of her sight; The hem of a white coat walking by towards yesterday, the bumbling chatter of castle officials of all stations as they made their way up and down the stairs alongside the comfortable din of Yuffie and the rest joking around. Occasionally, the sight of a stray spear or a broken fixture would call to mind that final escape on the day Radiant Garden ended and Hollow Bastion began, but it would never last for longer than a split second before more pleasant reveries overtook them. Perhaps they were responding to Kairi's mood, or perhaps not. But Kairi knew she was thankful for their quick departure in favor of more pleasant times to recall.

Such as the memory of a girl with long blonde hair and a blue dress walking down the stairwell above now, her apron swirling around the hem. Except as the _tap tap tap_ of her footsteps came closer and the girl stared at them back with a measure of surprise, Kairi understood that she wasn't a memory at all from the sight of her Heart alone.

She was Alice.

It was the first time Kairi had ever seen the Heart of a Princess of Heart before (as seeing one's own Heart was about as easy as trying to figure out what you looked like with no camera and no mirror, compounded by the fact that nobody else so far had known how to see Hearts like Kairi could). And the sight was suitably brilliant: As bright as the beacon she'd helped make and then some, was the strength of Alice's Light. And unlike the Heart of the boy's in the pale throne, hers had none of the bluish tinge that belied an artificial origin. Rather, it was just like staring into a star, or like the dappled gleam of sunlight pouring through the trees. The twinkle of morning dewdrops on flower petals.

Perfect Light, and nothing else.

They both stared at each other slightly taken aback for a moment, until it was Alice first who shook her head and came closer. "You must be Kairi, I'm so pleased to finally meet you!" She curtsied as best she could on the stairs. "You're the last Princess of Heart to arrive, the rest of us are up in the library. Belle made quite the discovery after the keyhole was finally sealed—A series of increasingly curious reports by a King Ansem! Or, um, _his royal majesty_ King Ansem," Alice corrected. "My apologies, I haven't much of an idea as to what the proper etiquette for royalty would be. The last queen I met tried to take me to court!"

"I-I am," Kairi stammered. "Nice to meet you too. Did you say reports by King Ansem? The wise?"

"And did you say you got sent to court?" Yuffie added. "Like, criminal court?"

"Why, yes," Alice said to Kairi, before adding, "And yes. The Queen of Hearts is quite mean, I'll say. I'd even venture to call her a tyrant if I hadn't met Maleficent!"

"Oh, yes, Maleficent," The Fairy Godmother grew visibly uncomfortable at the name alone. "Certainly not the kindest fairy around, that's for certain."

"Wait a minute," Cid rubbed at his forehead. "You mean to tell me there ain't just Princesses of Heart, but a Queen, too?"

Alice's eyes widened. "Oh, no! No, no, no," She answered hurriedly. "I meant like the cards suit of hearts. Believe me, her Heart isn't pure Light at all!"

Cid gave a relieved sigh. And from beside him, Aerith inquired, "The complete Ansem Reports are here, too? Could you show us, please?"

Alice was happy to, and with her lead the group was quickly led only a few stairs more to a corridor that had been much more affected by Maleficent's reign, judging by the constant thorned vine motifs reclining along the walls. And along the way to the library she told them of the barrier she and the other Princesses of Heart had made to protect the keyhole, and the stranger with no Heart that had walked right through it.

"Wait, wait, wait," Yuffie said. " _No Heart?_ At all? No Light or Dark or anything?"

"Indeed," Alice confirmed. "It was the strangest thing I think I've ever seen! On the outside he looked normal enough, save for the coat, but on the inside it was like the man was a hole! There was nothing there!"

"That's creepy," Kairi gave a shiver. Alice, looking unsettled herself, nodded.

"When Sora and her friends arrived, we told them about it and about how the Seeker of Darkness Ansem had disappeared. We still don't know where he is. But at least Sora and the others should be looking for the stranger right now."

The group arrived at a large ornate set of doors, and walked inside to a vast room that was lined nearly floor to ceiling with books. This room, Kairi noticed immediately, was much better kept than almost anywhere else she'd seen in the rest of the castle. And much better preserved in its original form. Maleficent must have specially chosen to withhold her hand on the library's redecoration, as there wasn't even a single thorned vine anywhere Kairi could see, nor any roses. The room's woodwork was still polished and gleamed cheerily in the sunlight pouring down through the stained-glass windows, all of which were entirely whole. Not a single book looked to be missing from the shelves, save for one or two here and there that were sitting on desks nearby.

In fact, the only evidence of Radiant Garden's initial fall that existed anywhere in the library were the very sparse claw mark here and there and one long gash in the floor, along with one pipe in the ceiling high above that threw off electricity. Why had Maleficent not touched this place at all?

Kairi set aside her questions to ponder later as she came up on a desk covered with papers. As The Fairy Godmother split off to join a young woman that was standing off to the side of the desk, wearing a silvery dress with her blonde hair in an updo, the others rushed forward.

Leon got there first, and upon commencing combing through the Ansem Reports, his expression slowly turned darker and darker. Aerith, who was second, had her eyes land on one report and she immediately appeared suspicious as well. And Yuffie, who had only just walked up, let out an abrupt, "Woah!"

"What? What is it?" Cid asked.

Leon whipped away the report he had been reading and handed it to Cid with nothing more than a brisk, "Here."

Compared to Leon and Aerith, Cid looked more troubled than angry, though not entirely devoid of the latter. "'The machine's test run successfully created a heartless'?"

"The king was in on it the whole time," Leon seethed. He pointed at another report. "Number two. _'I shall conduct the following experiments: Extract the Darkness from a person's Heart. Cultivate Darkness in a pure Heart,'_ finishing off with, _'Both suppress and amplify the Darkness within.'_ "

Cultivating Darkness in a pure Heart? Like…her Heart? Had King Ansem really been in on what had happened to her after all?

 _("What you're having us do is going far beyond science into the realm of something draconic. You have ignored ethics entirely.")_

"' _I've provided both living and nonliving samples,'_ " Aerith turned slightly green at the next words on her report, " _'They've responded only to the living.'_ "

"So that's," Cid faltered. "That's why people were going missing all over the place, then? Even in the very beginning?"

"It sure helps explain it," Leon spat. "People's kids started disappearing, remember, Cid? Their parents. Brothers. Sisters. Ansem probably used that fear to goad people into giving up their kids like Kairi to experiment on them to add to his heartless army. That was why Cloud volunteered to take part in their research permanently, right? Because after the first few tests he'd done for them alongside everyone else training for the guard, there was that huge accident on the outskirts of town that the apprentices and Ansem refused to give any statement on beyond that it was an 'accident with the power generator' despite eyewitnesses claiming they'd seen creatures that looked a hell of a lot like heartless?!"

Leon's voice had risen nearly to a shout over the course of his tirade, and Cid furrowed his brow at him.

"Cool it, kid," Cid warned. "Remember what Kairi said Apprentice Xehanort spouted off about? How he'd stolen King Ansem's login to the lab's security system alone? How he'd 'take whatever he needed'? It was all him and the rest of the apprentices, it had to be. Remember that."

"Cloud's mother died in that accident, Cid, it was why he agreed to it in the first place. He had nowhere else to go! All he'd had at that point was the guard, Zack's buster sword, and me. And—And Ansem just _used_ him—"

"We don't know if it was King Ansem or Xehanort!" Cid shouted, and at the thunderous silence in the wake of their raised voices he stopped short. Then, he exhaled forcefully before trying again, more calmly, "I know the, uh, _interesting_ folk of the city were right about the apprentices being in on it. And I know they were claiming the king was, too. But listen, Leon, there was some serious misinformation going around in the final couple months before everything went to shit and Radiant Garden fell. It's been ten years since then and we still don't know exactly what was true and what wasn't. Maybe we'll never know entirely. But we need to move forward. We just got our home back, we can't be thinking of the past right now."

"Are you serious? Don't tell me you're actually suggesting King Ansem could possibly be innocent in all of this. He was the one who announced his and his apprentices' experiments starting up in the first place!"

"And he was the one ordering Apprentice Xehanort to end them once things started going sour."

They continued to argue, this time with Aerith chiming in at parts, agreeing with Leon, and Kairi felt herself starting to go numb again. Her gaze drifted back down to the rest of the reports on the table, and she felt herself beginning to skim the same lines over and over again without actually reading what they had to say. And then she saw it.

Ansem Report number eleven. In impeccable handwriting, below the king and his apprentices' names and the royal seal, it read, _'_ _I've chosen a girl. I don't know if she holds the princesses' powers, but I will find out. She may lead me to the key bearer._ _I shall set her free and observe.'_

So that was it, then.

Kairi bit her tongue hard enough to taste metal in her efforts to resist crumpling the report. As it was, her hand still trembled with anger.

 _("I don't know where you'll end up," He started, and Kairi sobbed as he rushed her to the waiting portal, "But you're going to be okay. You're going to find the keybearer. And wherever you go, Light will follow you. I've seen it. Lead us to the key to everything. Now go!")_

His ghost Heart had flickered in that moment. Had 'Terra', whoever he was, been trying to take control? Had he been trying to do it all along, to keep Apprentice Xehanort from committing those atrocities?

Was he still in there somewhere, drowning beneath that Darkness that was so roiling, so reactive, that it seemed to be alive?

And if so, had Terra been watching for a decade all of the horrible things Apprentice Xehanort had done while possessing his Heart? What about Riku?

Kairi looked at the seal again. The letterhead. _H.R.M. King Ansem the Wise._ The signatures.

And she said, "It's a fake."

Both Leon and Cid ceased their arguing at that. "What?" Leon asked.

"It's a fake. This report, at least. But what happened in it is real."

"How can you tell?"

"Because I lived through what happened in it," She handed the Ansem Report over, and Yuffie, Aerith, and Cid all read over Leon's shoulders. "That girl he talks about 'setting free' to observe? That was me. He threw me through a Dark portal right in front of my grandmother and a few others as the heartless were pursuing us through the castle. This was on the last day of Radiant Garden before it turned into Hollow Bastion—Sora and Riku have told me before about seeing a crazy meteor shower the night before they found me in Destiny Islands. That must have been when he 'opened the door to the world's Heart' he talks about there, too, that caused its walls to crumple and allowed Maleficent to come in and take over."

"The date's marked a good while after we left," Cid said. "I was right. These really must be by Apprentice Xehanort."

"And it coincides with when we got the first crop of newcomers from Radiant Garden in Traverse Town," Aerith pointed out. She then walked over to pick up another Ansem Report, and said, "But I'm still not sure every last one was written by him. Like this one we already found before: ' _Today I had a guest from another world. He is a king, and his vessel is built of the material that composed the meteors. He called the pieces 'gummi blocks.'_ Goofy and Donald told me that was their king, Mickey, visiting King Ansem once on his travels."

"That doesn't add up to me either when I think about it," Yuffie speculated. "If Apprentice Xehanort had supposedly written all of these, why? What would be the point if nobody else was intended to see them apart from maybe the other apprentices? I can see why he'd take King Ansem's identity for, like, logins and stuff, but why go through the trouble of writing these reports? Even after Radiant Garden fell he continued to write them by the look of these dates, and by that point it wouldn't even matter if the real Ansem were a king or not since he was dead. His identity wouldn't even matter at all."

Leon let out a long sigh and pinched between his eyes. "Assuming King Ansem even is dead at this point. I don't know what to believe anymore."

Cid gave a humorless chuckle at that and sank into the desk's chair. "Believe that King Ansem wanted the best for Radiant Garden, Leon. Believe that he came to be known as King Ansem the Wise for a good reason. Whatever the hell happened here, it's not on him."

"I—Look, Cid, I get why you'd think highly of him, but people my age never actually _saw_ any of the stuff from those stories. To us, Ansem was just—"

Leon's reply was cut short as the upper story doors to the library slammed open, and was revealed to be Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy, all of whom looked harried and littered with burns.

"We gotta go," Sora announced, "Now."

* * *

 **SORA**

 _Day Six_

"What?" Cid looked confused. She could see him eying the burns up and down her arms, the singed holes in Donald's and Goofy's hats. "Kid, why? And what happened to you guys in that fight?"

She could see The Fairy Godmother break away from Cinderella farther down the aisle upon catching sight of them, and with a wave of her wand as she approached their wounds faded, and the marks in Donald's and Goofy's garments with them. "Crazy laser guy named Xemnas used his lasers to do laser stuff. And he also told us where Ansem was, along with a whole bunch of other nonsense aside from calling us idiots."

"Yeah, that was rude," Donald said.

"Wait, what? You mean that Ansem, 'Seeker of Darkness' guy?" At their nods Cid swore under his breath. "Well, where is he?"

"Kingdom Hearts."

Sora counted a full ten seconds of silence at her answer. Before reactions varying from confusion, to anger, and everywhere in between rang out. It wasn't long before a multitude of conversations went on at once, overlapping.

Yuffie questioned, "Hold up, like the _real_ Kingdom Hearts? That's nuts. That's completely nuts—"

"—Goodness gracious," The Fairy Godmother looked alarmed, and turned back towards Cinderella, saying, "Dear? Might you and the others have sensed anything—"

"—How could he have gotten there?—"

"—Aerith's got a point, that keyblade he made from the Princesses was never finished, so there's no way he's actually in Kingdom Hearts—"

"—The dude was an apprentice to the king first, right? He could have done some crazy science—"

"—I can't believe this. He's in Kingdom Hearts. _Kingdom Hearts._ Holy crap—"

The talk began to reach a fevered pitch, and it was Cid who clapped his hands and called out, "All right, ALL RIGHT! Everyone pipe down for a minute, damn it! Now, you four," He gestured to the trio, and Jiminy who was crawling out of Sora's hood, "Tell us exactly what went down. Word for word."

Between them, it was easy to recall almost exactly how both the fight and the rest of the encounter went. From the Ansem Report Xemnas had produced, to how he had walked through her and spurred those flashbacks (at which point both Cinderella and The Fairy Godmother came back to the fold, and Cinderella told them of how Xemnas walked through their barrier as well), to Xemnas' words on the 'data collection' that the test was intended for and the end of his visit.

"…And then he was all, 'Goodbye, Sora. We will meet again,'" She did her best to flex her admittedly meagre muscles and tried to match the ridiculous timbre of his voice, but managed only a mocking impression. Which was just as well, she supposed, because that guy had been a total jerk. "By the way, how did he know my name? Did one of you tell him or something?" She asked Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy, each of whom only shrugged and shook their heads.

"So he clarified that Ansem, Seeker of Darkness is a _heartless?_ " Leon asked incredulously. "And that King Ansem abdicated?"

"It would make sense," Kairi replied. "Nothing human can have Darkness like he does."

Cinderella agreed. "It was the first thing I noticed when I laid eyes on him as well. That and his Hearts."

"Still, though, who knew just a simple heartless could cause damage like this?" Yuffie gestured all around, and they knew she was referring to the entirety of Hollow Bastion, for the library was in much better shape. "Or look like a person? I thought heartless always looked like little black shadow-people usually, if they didn't look like other types like the ones we ran into earlier. And none of those looked human either."

Kairi bit her lip. "He might not be just a simple heartless."

"What do you mean?"

"Even before he looked entirely human at the end of our last visit here, he looked vaguely like a person already, just covered in a baggy cloak. But the fact that he was able to not only possess Riku's body but change its appearance is something none of us have ever seen in other heartless, right? Heartless usually just consume Hearts and their Light and keep the Darkness within themselves. The bodies vanish. But Ansem seemed to preserve the body and put himself and his other Heart inside of it when he took Riku's, and then changed Riku's body entirely. That's not normal."

"But Xemnas seemed to know him personally," Aerith replied. "Or at least indicated that he knows him better than we do. Like how he knew it for himself that Ansem has always been ambitious, and I got the feeling from the wording that the two of them go a ways back somehow. So if he said he was a heartless, then he likely is a heartless. Just not a typical one."

Yuffie shifted from foot to foot, clearly uncomfortable. "Do you think he might have become a heartless through some other means than usual? Like, did Ansem outright make himself into a heartless using some weird science stuff?"

"I wouldn't be surprised."

"Neither would I," Kairi remarked. "He could have done it after Radiant Garden fell and experimented on himself from what he learned from his work."

"There was one Ansem Report I saw that would fit the bill," Jiminy said, and opened his umbrella to leap off from Sora's shoulder and float gently down to the surface of the desk. He made his way over to an Ansem Report, marked the tenth. "See? He talks about casting off his body and plunging to the depths of the Darkness!"

"That settles it, then," Cid decided. "Explains the 'Seeker of Darkness' moniker."

"But there's still the matter of Ansem finding Kingdom Hearts itself, though," Leon crossed his arms. "He never finished the Dark keyblade, and from what I can discern he needed it to summon Kingdom Hearts? Or unlock it?"

He glanced to her and Kairi for clarification, and Sora shrugged. "Something like that. All we could figure was that he really wanted it finished, so it would make sense for it to have something to do with Kingdom Hearts if Xemnas said he was after that. That keyblade's definitely different from mine."

Sora couldn't help the hand that flickered to her chest at that, remembering the sickening chokehold the Dark keyblade had put her in even from merely being pointed at her. Like she was about to have a heart attack.

She flinched just from the memory of it. She was _really_ glad that thing was broken, even if it took stabbing herself to do it.

But it was strange that such a horrible thing came from the Hearts of the Princesses, minus Kairi. So far every one of them that Sora had met would never hurt a fly, and though some might have had a fierce temper, such as Jasmine and Kairi, they were all moral, upstanding people. So how had something so Dark come from people of such Light?

Ansem, she figured. Whatever had happened to make that keyblade so horrible, it had to be because of him.

"He might not be in Kingdom Hearts at all."

Everyone gathered looked to Aerith at those words. "Care to explain?" Yuffie asked.

"Well," Aerith walked back over towards the desk and looked over the Ansem Reports. "We know that he never finished the Dark keyblade, so Kingdom Hearts itself is likely unreachable to him. Kairi told us that story her grandmother told her, of how there is a Light that sleeps within the Darkness, mirroring closely what Maleficent told Riku of Kingdom Hearts. 'The One True Light'. 'The Light that Slumbers Still'. To me, these names indicate that that sleeping Light and Kingdom Hearts are the same thing, if not extremely closely related."

"Wait, it makes sense, but it doesn't explain how he's not in Kingdom Hearts right now, though."

"Kingdom Hearts was also called the 'Heart of All Hearts'. I'd guess that if Ansem accessed it, and was currently doing something horrible to it with Darkness, we'd be able to feel it ourselves given that we have Hearts. Speaking of, Kairi, Cinderella, you and the rest of the Princesses of Heart reported sensing a great Darkness from very far off, right?" At their assent, Aerith paused. "I'm sure that if he accessed Kingdom Hearts itself, you would feel it better than anyone. But if you're able to sense that Darkness without it interfering with your ability to function, then whatever he's doing must not be devastating yet. But it will be very soon."

"Xemnas said that the Heart of one world wouldn't be enough for Ansem," Goofy said. "And Ansem himself told me and Donald before tossin' us to the heartless that all of the worlds would fall to the Darkness soon enough."

"Then he's going after the Hearts of the worlds," Leon stared past them all towards the stained-glass windows on the far wall, the light from which was now slightly lower than when they'd arrived. It was approaching late afternoon. "If he can't go after Kingdom Hearts itself. To him it must be the next best thing."

"But how?" Sora asked. Weren't her efforts on every world she encountered supposed to prevent this? "I've already sealed all the keyholes we've found so far."

"So far," Leon reminded her. "Look at every star in the sky. Have you been to every last one? If every star's a world, and every world has a keyhole, you guys have only helped protect nine of them so far."

She, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy all deflated slightly at that fact. Leon gave them a sympathetic glance.

"Sorry," He said, "But it's true. Only nine worlds are protected right now and there's no telling if whatever he's doing to destroy all the others' Hearts doesn't also include a way to destroy the Hearts that you've sealed as well. This guy's a heartless, he specializes in that sort of thing."

"So what do we do?" Donald fretted. "We can't let all our work be for nothing!"

"And all those people," Goofy added. "If there's no Traverse Town there to catch them when their worlds fall to the Darkness, and there's no other worlds for them to potentially go instead, what'll happen to them?"

"Then the people might end up falling to the Darkness along with their worlds," Cid said dismally.

No. That couldn't be.

And yet, Sora couldn't imagine any other outcome. Her first night in Traverse Town, stranded and scared, and Sora knew she never would have gotten as far as she has without that fateful meeting between her and the friends that have joined her on every world in their journey. When Donald and Goofy fell from the sky and the three of them fought heartless together, and with theirs and Jiminy's guidance the mystery of what was happening was slowly unfolded. But now an even bigger, and more pressing, situation took its place.

Sora remembered that day in Monstro where Pinocchio and Gepetto were separated by Riku. She remembered how Jiminy was fraught with worry over him. And she remembered her mom—how none of them had managed to find her yet. And how with every world they visited, she couldn't help but lose a little more hope that she'd ever find her no matter how much she tried to remain optimistic. And finally, she remembered that they hadn't managed to find anyone's parents yet. Not Riku's, not Kairi's, nor any of their other friends from the islands.

And that was just her own story. How many others just like it were ending up the same way across the worlds? How many other survivors were searching for their loved ones? How many others were defenseless against the heartless, like that man back in Traverse Town on her first night there, lost to the creatures before she could try to intervene?

Now if Ansem were to succeed in whatever he was doing, those people would vanish at best…and become heartless at worst.

Sora remembered what it was like to be a heartless. She remembered it no matter how much she wanted to forget. And she wouldn't wish the experience on anyone else.

And so, with these things in mind, she figured there was only one thing she could do.

"I'll stop him."

"Not alone, you won't!" Donald raised his staff in a gesture of solidarity. "If you're going, we'll go too!"

"Yeah," Goofy chimed in. "All for one and one for all, ahyuk!"

Jiminy turned back from his spot on the desk where he had been beginning to transcribe the Ansem Reports into his journal. "And none of you are leaving without me this time, either! After what happened last time, you're going to need a voice of reason before you stab yourself with a keyblade again!"

"And I'm going too."

Sora looked over to see Kairi clutching her sword closely, and quickly shook her head. "Nope. Nope, nope, nope. No way. Nuh-uh, not happening."

Kairi scowled. "Why not? Apprentice Xehanort was behind almost everything that's happened to me so far. I've got experience defeating heartless. And plus, Riku's still my friend, too. Why can't I go?"

"You're doing good so far, Kairi," Leon said, "but you're still inexperienced. You've got a lot to learn."

"You said Sora still had a lot to learn, too!"

"Oi! No I don't!"

"Xemnas said the same thing," Donald laughed.

"He was talking about using the keyblade, not with fighting—" She cut herself off and sighed. "Whatever, that's not important right now. What I was going to say was that you'll always be with me in spirit, right? Our Hearts were connected literally, but that doesn't mean they were broken apart when you got out. No matter the distance, our Hearts are still one."

"The distance does matter when I can't help you fight if I'm on a whole different world! I need to be there!"

"Sora has a point, Kairi," Aerith said gently, and reached to put a hand on Kairi's shoulder. "You're a Princess of Heart, and Ansem already tried to take your Heart once. If he gets the opportunity to take it again and succeeds in creating that Dark keyblade in its entirety, I'm worried nothing could stop him. We can't risk you."

Yuffie got a look of inspiration at that. "Then we can still go, can't we? I volunteer."

"You've still got a lot to learn too, Yuffie," Leon said.

"Then why should Sora go at all?" Kairi argued. "She, Donald, and Goofy will be fighting alone against Apprentice Xehanort, and he managed to turn Maleficent into a dragon! Not to mention all the other crazy stuff he's been up to according to these reports and what I've seen. You all know what he's capable of, and there could be more that he can do that we don't even know about yet! Me, Cinderella, and the rest of the Princesses of Heart can _feel_ what he's capable of right now! I don't know what that Darkness is that we're feeling, but I remember it from Radiant Garden and Destiny Islands. If it's strong enough that we can feel it from what could be entire worlds away, and if it's capable of wiping out all of the worlds like he said he wanted to do, how can they stop him without our help?"

Sora summoned the keyblade back to her hand and held it up.

"With this," she declared. Trusting in it had gotten her this far. Fighting for the Light had gotten her this far. And she knew both would get her further yet. Sora watched Kairi's eyes follow the keychain's swinging and couldn't help but notice the not-insignificant measure of anxiousness she looked upon the keyblade with as well. "The keyblade chose m—"

"I swear, Sora, if you say the keyblade chose you for a reason to justify running off to your death _again_ —"

"Well, it did choose me for a reason! And it came back to me for a reason too. _Not_ to run off to my death, but to fight for good. To keep the worlds from falling. To help save the Light. And to defeat heartless," She concluded. "I think I won the keyblade back because I told the truth; That, sure, I'm nowhere near as strong as someone like Ansem, but my Heart is not alone. I've got you," Sora reached into her pocket and pulled out the charm Kairi had given her. "I promised that after all of this was done, that I would come back. I meant that, Kai. And there's the fact that I beat Ansem once already, right? When he still looked like Riku?"

Kairi hesitated to answer for a long moment, before finally relenting. "Yeah."

She grinned. "And me, Donald, and Goofy managed to beat Maleficent too. We'll work together to make everything right just like we've been doing this whole time, and we'll continue to do it for a little longer, that's all. After everything's done, we'll come back."

At those words, The Fairy Godmother stepped forward, wringing her wand in her hands.

"On the contrary my dear, I fear you may not be able to if all goes well," She looked to Cinderella, and then down below towards the other Princesses of Heart currently wandering around the library's aisles. "Nor would any of us not native to this world."

All of them straightened at that.

"What? What do you mean?" Kairi questioned.

"For as long as I can remember," The Fairy Godmother explained, "The worlds have always been separated. Very, very, very few had the ability to travel from one world to another, and even they had trouble doing so and could only manage it at certain points in Darker times like now. You have only been able to travel the worlds because of this period of turmoil, but if you were to end the cause of that turmoil, and save the worlds, we shall all be isolated again. The natural order requires it."

"The world order you talked about, Donald," Sora said. He nodded.

"I knew it'd be important if we succeeded in our mission," Donald replied. "That's why I insisted on it all along and why I changed our appearances when it was needed. Even though you two did your best to wreck it," Donald passed a glare to her and Goofy before continuing, "If we didn't try to maintain it while fighting the heartless, then if we won and fixed everything there would still be the disturbance we caused in the citizens' understanding of their worlds, and it would cause chaos within the worlds whose orders we messed up. And chaos causes Darkness! Our work would never end."

The Fairy Godmother nodded. "It is the price we pay for lasting peace."

"But then," Sora turned to Donald and Goofy, and then looked at Jiminy on the desk. "I'd go back to the islands, wouldn't I? Jiminy would go back to Pinocchio and Gepetto, and Donald and Goofy would go back to their castle with King Mickey. We would never see each other again."

Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy all drooped at that. And Sora could see Kairi come to a sudden realization.

"Would I go back to Destiny Islands, too?" She asked nervously. "Or would I stay here? I-I want to go back to my home. I want to see my parents again."

"And my mom, too," Sora chimed in.

But The Fairy Godmother could only shrug. "We have no way of knowing until all is right. I imagine once the problem is solved, then we shall all wake up back where we were before we left or were taken."

"Then what about the worlds fallen to Darkness?" Leon inquired. "Some of the Princesses' home worlds ended up that way, along with Sora's. Where will they go?"

"My world fell to the Darkness, too," Jiminy added as he took his tiny hat in his hands. "Prankster's Paradise."

"It will take enough Light to fix what Ansem has done, and some extra, to bring back the lost Light to the Hearts of fallen worlds," The Fairy Godmother hummed, and she glanced not to the keyblade, but to the charm in Sora's other hand. "I cannot help you too much on your journey, for I am bound to certain rules as a fairy. Goodness knows I would be no better than Maleficent if I did not honor every rule, only the ones I had no choice but to follow," She tutted. "The world order, remember. But there's nothing saying I can't help give you a bit of inspiration when the time comes, and the reminder of the connections you've made on your journey when all seems Darkest."

She raised her wand, and they all watched as a rainbow of glimmering sparks swirled out of the end of it, marking a trail as she raised the wand in the air. And then the Fairy Godmother held out her hand.

"If I may, Sora, I would like to ask to see that charm for a moment."

Sora blinked. "Sure," She handed it over, and The Fairy Godmother continued to hold her hand out, even with the thalassa shell charm now in it. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to cast a charm of my own upon it, my dear. Now, can everyone please gather round?"

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _Day ?_

"I made her make that promise for you just as my master made me make that promise," Aqua explained. "For Terra. And after that day a lot unfolded between us that I wish had never happened and it made me finally understand how much of a burden having a keyblade could be. Light, or Dark, the path of the keyblade wielder is a path taken alone. We can have friends, sure, and apprentices. But we're wanderers in the end, and that means we can't get too close to anyone."

 _("Nobody is supposed to be truly alone, Riku. That's not how people work. People are supposed to work together and open our Hearts to each other, and that's how we become a part of something greater than ourselves. That's how our Hearts become one.")_

On Riku's other side, Mickey made a sound as though he wanted to protest, but did not interject.

Aqua continued, "He and I thought we could be the exceptions to that, but fate proved us wrong. So when I remembered he told me he sought to take on an apprentice, I became worried for you. Even more so when I saw you and Sora myself: I saw how happy the two of you were and I didn't want to risk ruining that. I knew nothing good would be coming for you when I heard he had performed the ceremony with you, especially with the Darkness I sensed you hold even then. Sora, I found, was able to take that Darkness and turn it right back around without any effort at all. Initially I thought to take her as my own apprentice, so that at least your paths could cross like mine and Terra's, but I remembered the promise I made for Terra and it inspired me to do the same with her. One keyblade can cause enough trouble on its own."

"Too late for that," Riku remarked with a sigh.

"Yeah, that didn't pan out much either, did it?" Aqua gave a sad chuckle. "But in the end, all any of us can do is try. I'm not going to lie to you and say it doesn't hurt when you don't succeed," She cast a sad glance down at her fingertips. "Especially when you bet everything on the only chance you have of making things right. But you can't let your regrets eat you alive. You have to remember your Light."

"What Light?" He begged, and kicked his heels against the edge of the cliffside and watched small rocks splinter off into the churning waves below. "I sent my home here to the bottom of the Realm of Darkness. Sora is dead. And now all the worlds and everyone in them will either end up as heartless, dead, or fall down here soon, too."

"You found our way here through remembering your Light," Aqua revealed. "You thought of home. All the childhood memories you had here, I'm certain of it. I did the same by thinking of Terra and Ven, and that was how I saw them again and again, and though so often they turned out to be tricks the Realm of Darkness was playing on me, finally I saw them for real. That was how I met Terra again," And she added, almost too quietly for Riku to hear, "And ended up like this."

Riku winced. He knew he had been a little taken aback by Aqua's current appearance, stained by the Darkness as it was, especially when he remembered that memory of how she had once looked to compare: Untarnished. Untorn. Whole. When her skin had all been the same hue and her hair hadn't started to whiten at the tips. When her overskirts weren't mangled from a decade of fighting without an end in sight and her eyes didn't have that slight ring of gold around the pupils. But he knew he had to say something to help keep her spirits up in turn, too.

"You're going to be okay," He assured her. "You won't lose yourself to the Darkness like Terra and I did. You're Master Aqua."

"Some master I am," The corners of her lips twitched into a fleeting humorless smile. "It wasn't…" She inspected her fingertips with disgust. "…This _bad_ before I found out what happened to Terra. I had been wandering this place for a decade and could still resist using what I'd learned from Master Eraqus. But I threw myself down here for Terra, and when I saw that Xehanort still got to him in the end, it wrecked me. And as I sank farther and farther, that's when I thought back to everything that happened. That's how I remembered you, and his promise to you. Sora's promise to me."

"That might be what led us all together," Mickey said. He stood up and shook the sand off of himself, and even while standing he wasn't much taller than Riku and Aqua when they were sitting. He offered a hand to them both. "But Riku's right, Aqua. You're Master Aqua, and that's a promise. When you became a master, you made the vow to fight for the Light, and to defend it and those who resided in its Realm from any forces that seek to destroy it. You made the vow to maintain balance in your Heart to aid you in your tasks. When I became a master, I made the same promise."

He went on, putting his hands on his hips and donning a stern expression that looked uncharacteristic on his cartoonish appearance. "And you need to remember your Light too, Aqua! Keyblade masters are _not_ alone, we are never alone! We have all of the people we've met and become close to on our travels, and everyone who's cheered us on along the way! Sure, we might not see those people again after our visit, or maybe we will. But they will always remember us fondly just as we remember them, and we can be reminded of that when we look up at the sky at night. For every star is a world, and in one of those stars a few of your friends will be living. And in another star a few more of your friends will be laughing. And another, and another, and another until the whole night sky is filled with applause for you. So long as our Hearts are connected, even by the faintest memory of one another, the stars will cheer us on! No matter the distance, no matter whether or not you can see them. Remember those stars, Aqua, and you can always remember your Light."

Both Riku and Aqua could only stare at him for a second, taken aback. And from his side, Riku could see Aqua duck her head and hurriedly wipe at her eyes. "Thank you," She mumbled.

"You're welcome," Mickey replied, his countenance softened by his returning smile.

Riku looked away for a moment. The similarities in demeanor between Sora and Mickey were unmistakable now, and having Mickey around in this place was something Riku was growing more thankful for by the minute.

"That sounds just like something Sora would say," Riku chuckled. He decided to stand up himself, and held out a hand to help Aqua to her feet. And as the three of them stood watching the remains of the play island stir in the breeze, Riku did not think about the Dark growths all over the place and wreckage of the wooden scaffolding swaying down. He did not think of the brokenness of its shore.

Instead, he thought about how it looked when it was whole. Of all that had transpired on this island before everything changed.

The spars. The races. The exploring. The secret place, the waterfall, the times they tried to fish (and quickly stopped for the seagulls continuously stealing their catches). The sleepovers and waking up early to watch the sunrises, and sitting on the shore to watch the sunsets. The days that he had wished so many times for them to never end.

And the sight had been so common that Riku could easily imagine Sora lying on the shore in the middle of yet another nap.

 _("_ _'You are the one who will open the Door.'")_

His Heart clenched.

"And to think all of this started with a dream," Riku mused aloud. And this time, he thought of the broken shore and the growths of Darkness spiraling towards the treetops. And he thought of the wooden scaffolding swaying in the breeze. Aqua and Mickey both looked over.

"A dream, huh?" Aqua asked.

"Yeah," Riku's eyes lingered on that spot over on the sand, as if Sora was already there and flopped down. "It was a couple days before Ansem would come and I would help him take the islands' Heart. You'd think it would be long enough for me to get over Sora's dream, but I was still so _angry_ about it all the way until then, even though the worst of it had subsided by the time I—" _By the time I went home that night,_ he thinks to himself. _By the time I was stupid and tried getting mom's attention one more time and only made myself angrier than ever. Maybe that's when my path to this point really started._ "—B-by the time I went home that last night," He stammered, and did his best to not let his thoughts show on his face.

He walked over to the spot and took a deep breath. "It was a normal day otherwise. We were almost done assembling this raft we thought we could sail to other places out across the ocean in," Riku laughed. "I wanted to find other worlds. I was inspired by how Kairi had seemingly magically poofed onto Destiny Islands, which I guess wasn't too far from the truth after all, and by that visit Terra had made when I was small. I knew there had to be something out there we could reach, if others had reached us. Anyway, that day I think Sora was supposed to be helping me with something, but me and Kairi found her taking a nap like usual."

Riku continued, "When she'd told me of the dream she had while napping, she mentioned this place made of stained-glass—"

"Those circular stained-glass platforms, right?" The corners of Aqua's eyes crinked in a look of fondness. "It's a rite of passage for gaining the keyblade, though it can take forever for it to happen. I remember me and Terra were so excited when Ven finally had his."

"Me too, for mine," Mickey chimed in.

Riku finally looked up from the spot to look over to them. Mickey and Aqua finally seemed happy, _genuinely_ happy, with no discernible signs of faking it or exaggerating it, at a good memory for the two of them, and it was enough to quell the old stab of envy in his chest.

 _(This place is not for meant for you as you are. It is meant for you as you could be. As you should be.)_

He turned his head back down to the spot briefly, and in that moment he let go of his jealousy forever.

"Yeah. The stained-glass platforms," Riku said. "And the Voice that talked to her about the journey she would take. All the stuff she would go on to do now, I think," _(Would if she could,)_ that Dark corner of his mind hissed, _(she can't anymore, can't she?)_ "Around the worlds with Donald and Goofy. But when I asked why she was so worked up about something we thought then was just another weird dream, Sora just…did this thing where she looked over towards the entrance to the secret place over there almost fearfully," _(Like she was afraid of your reaction.)_ "And said that the Voice told her at the end, _'You are the one that will open the Door.'_ "

"I was sick with envy when she told me that," _(And now you know she was right to be afraid of what you'd think of that. To be afraid of_ you. _)_ "Because I thought it was referring to the door in the secret place. Ever since Terra visited and I took his oath for the Bequeathing, I had been having dreams of opening it and walking out onto other worlds. And those dreams formed the basis of all these fantasies I'd have about finally getting off the islands, until one day they stopped entirely. So years later, hearing Sora say that she'd had what I knew then had to be the fateful dream for getting the keyblade? For opening the door that _I_ was so curious about all my life? I couldn't take it."

"And Xehanort took advantage of that," Aqua concluded. She stared at the distant gathering of shrubbery and trees alongside Riku. Meanwhile, Mickey appeared to have had a burst of inspiration.

"Wait a minute!" He blurted out, "Did you say Sora got her inheritance here? On this exact island?"

Riku was a little surprised by how quickly his tone changed. "I think so? If you mean when she actually got her keyblade?"

"Yeah!"

"Then I guess it was somewhere around here, I suppose."

"I know that's the term for it, Mickey," Aqua said, "But she didn't inherit a keyblade from anyone we know of. That reminds me, how did she get a keyblade if nobody did the ceremony with her?" She wondered aloud.

If possible, Mickey perked up at that even more. "That's supposed to be one of the hallmarks of it," He said to himself.

Riku angled his head slightly. "Hallmarks for the keyblade to the Realm of Light?"

"Yes," Mickey said hurriedly as he whipped around to look in every direction. "Y'see, that's no ordinary keyblade! Not just because it's got a twin, the one I was down here to look for, but because—"

"Because it has the ability to judge," Riku breathed. "You mean Xehanort was right?"

"I, well, um," Mickey hesitated to voice his agreement, and Aqua stepped in.

"Xehanort is extremely well-versed on the matters of keyblades and their lore, and the history of keyblade wielders," She said. "Better than Master Eraqus, even, and likely on par with Yen Sid from what Mickey's said before. But don't go around thinking that just because he's right about the technical knowledge in this instance would also mean he's right on matters of morality. Xehanort will tell one truth after another and as many lies as he can sneak in to convince you into doing what he wants."

"Yeah," Riku's voice shook. "I've learned that well enough already. It's just crazy to think he was telling the truth, too. Even just with that."

"When in doubt, don't listen to him. And it's a good rule of thumb to always doubt him."

"Anyways," Mickey started again, "The keyblade to the Realm of Light only ever appears when it decides that the Realm is in enough danger to warrant choosing a wielder to combat the threat. And the thing about wielding that keyblade is that anyone can wield it, not only those who have undergone a Bequeathing," He began to walk quickly up and down the cliffside, and they followed. "Though it will have a preference for someone who has undergone it over someone who hasn't, according to past appearances. But most importantly of all, it will choose the strongest Heart. The one with the most conviction, who will fight for harmony between Light and Darkness."

That certainly fell in line with how things had gone down earlier in Hollow Bastion. Harmony, in the case of Sora winning it back, meant fighting for the Light. And not for the Dark, as he had mistakenly thought.

"Alright, so why are we running around now?" He asked as Mickey peeked around another bush and scanned the vicinity again. "Is it to do with the keyblade to the Realm of Darkness you said you were looking for?"

"Yep!" Mickey continued to search, and Riku and Aqua almost struggled to keep up. "Light follows Dark, and Dark follows Light. The two need each other, like it or not, and that pattern continues in their Realms' respective keyblades; If the keyblade to the Realm of Light first appeared on this island, then the keyblade to the Realm of Darkness would be somewhere nearby. _Very_ nearby!"

Wait a minute. Riku stopped following Aqua and Mickey as the wheels started churning in his head.

"Mickey," Aqua said tentatively as he checked around another Dark growth and started searching under the leaves of bushes, his black wiry tail sticking out. "With all due respect, do you really think a keyblade this important would be under a rock or something?"

"…Maybe you're right," Mickey crawled back out and sat on the sand with his head in his hand. "But I don't see it anywhere out here. Where could it be?"

"If the keyblade to the Realm of Darkness always follows the keyblade to the Realm of Light as to where it appears," Riku asked. An idea had come to mind, but he had to be absolutely sure first. "Does that mean the Dark Realm's keyblade can appear in the same place in the Light Realm where its own keyblade first appeared?"

"Well, not exactly," Mickey replied, "It would appear in the corresponding place in the Realm of Darkness, give or take a few meters, which means it would only appear if the world that its twin appeared fell to the Darkness."

Now that was suspicious.

"Would Anse—Xehanort know this?" At their somewhat unsure agreement, he went on, "Because if he knew Sora would get the keyblade to the Realm of Light here, and later he helped me take Destiny Islands' Heart, he must have known the corresponding keyblade would appear in the same place in the Realm of Darkness."

Riku could see the possibility dawn on Aqua's face, and he continued.

"Do those two keyblades do anything special together or something? Do they have anything special about them beyond their ability to decide on stuff?"

"Many have guessed so, but few would ever know with any confidence," Aqua recalled, "This is calling back history lessons I can barely even remember."

"Master Yen Sid told me the last time the keyblade to the Realm of Light appeared was hundreds of years ago, during a time of war when keyblades were way more common than they are now," Mickey explained. "And when other special keyblades existed. The only thing I know the keyblades to the Realms of Light and Darkness can do together for sure is to seal the door Ansem opened, and that's becau— _WOAH!"_

 _CR-I-I-I-ITCH—CRACK!_

All three of them were thrown off their feet when a tremendous upheaval started beneath them, and the entirety of the play island was now starting to bob up and down. But the landmass was not only moving vertically, for Riku could feel it begin to shift outward towards the ocean as well. Another creaking sound started over the trio's heads, and before Riku knew it he had been yanked up with one arm by Aqua, and judging by the noise of exclamation coming from Mickey she had swept him up in the other.

She raced over the sand towards the edge of the shore, and dropped them into the sand just in time for them to turn to see the part of the walkway that had been precariously hanging off of the cliff up above had crashed dangerously close to where the trio had just stood searching for the keyblade.

"Stay close," Aqua ordered them, and they both nodded as Mickey and Aqua both summoned their keyblades to their hands. Riku itched to summon Soul Eater to his own.

"What's happening?" He asked.

But his question had begun to be answered in the next moment as the sky began to turn purple, and settle into red. The Dark growths around the play island seemed to be moving to Riku, though it was hard to tell from the continued shaking of the ground.

And in another moment Riku realized he was right, but that they weren't just moving. They were growing. And more came up to join them soon enough.

The Light from Aqua forming a spell got his attention, and he wrenched his eyes away from the sight of the Dark growths now forming a barrier of some sort to the sight of what looked like a vast cluster of birds forming knots as they flew high up in the air, like a snake.

Then Riku realized it once he saw the stirring of a thousand bright gold eyes in the cluster.

Those weren't birds at all, nor a snake.

It was heartless.

* * *

 **SORA**

 _Day Nine_

 _The gummi ship was ready to go. Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy had already climbed in as Sora made her way towards the open hatch. Very soon, they would leave Radiant Garden. Potentially for good._

" _Hey, Sora."_

 _At the sound of her name, she turned around in surprise. It was Cid._

 _He shifted his stance and scratched the back of his head. "Be sure you don't, uh…don't die or anything. Okay? I can't exactly say, 'come back after this is over' because if this goes right then you_ won't _come back, but—"_

" _That's the first time you said my name since we met," Sora resisted the urge to laugh._

 _Cid rolled his eyes. "Yeah, don't worry, kid. I'm not gonna wear it out or anything, okay?"_

 _She stared at him for a moment before she rushed in for a hug. "I won't die or anything, Cid," She laughed. "I promise."_

" _Good," He ruffled her hair._

 _The engine roared to life behind them, and Sora pulled away to look towards the gummi ship where Donald was waving for her to hurry up._

" _Guess I'll see you later, gramps."_

" _Yeah," Cid laughed. "Guess I'll see you later too, kid."_

 _They both knew those words might never be the truth, but in that moment it didn't matter._

She supposed it had to be at least a few hours since the group left Hollow Bastion, perhaps half a day at the very most. But when Sora returned to the cockpit she saw the gummi ship's clock on the dashboard continued to glitch, jumping ahead by days and back by hours, and its display began to grow fuzzy around the edges. Goofy's snoring made for a cheery din as Donald muttered curses at the clock as she strapped herself back into her seat, and his voice raised to a shout as he slapped the interface display.

In fact, the more Sora looked, the problem was not only with the clock. The entire interface was beginning to glitch as well, with random symbols replacing themselves with others, and a slight static fuzz now overlaying everything. On the dashboard, Jiminy continued to look over his notes, and shot a disapproving look at Donald as his slapping the display came a little too close.

"Stars and garters, Donald, you nearly got me there!"

"Sorry," Donald scowled at the display, and this time tried to adjust his angle to where he hit certain parts more than others, and assessed the changing of the static as he did. "Blasted thing won't work with me here!"

Jiminy sighed. And then he flipped back a couple of pages in his journal, and absently tapped his tiny pen against the side of his head. "I've been thinking," Jiminy started.

Sora looked over. "Yeah?"

He flipped back and forth between pages, checking two in particular. "Report Ten says that Apprentice Xehanort cast off his body to the Darkness, saying it was too frail. And Report Thirteen, that Xemnas gave us, talks about the possibility that after a person is taken by the heartless, their body doesn't actually disappear as it would seem. That it just kind of goes on as a shell."

"How would that work?"

"I'm not sure," Jiminy replied. "But I think we've seen it in action. Beca—"

His words were cut off by the gummi ship giving a strong lurch, startling everyone. In his chair, Goofy blinked blearily as he woke up from his nap.

"Donald!" Sora snapped.

Donald raised his hands. "It wasn't me! This thing's going haywire!"

"That was a good nap," Goofy yawned. "Did ya'll find that Darkness Kairi was sensin' yet?"

"No," He replied. The screen fizzled again.

"You'd think a ridiculously huge Dark hole that's pelting out enough Darkness to be felt from worlds away would be easy to find," Sora groaned.

"It'd sure be easier to find it if this stupid interface was working!" Donald barked as he smacked the screen again, the static on the display getting worse every time he did so.

"Donald, don't you think hitting it won't help fix it?" Jiminy enquired, his line of thought on the reports quickly forgotten.

"I know, but it makes me feel better!"

"What's wrong with it?" Goofy asked.

"The time keeps jumping forward before going back to normal. And the GPS keeps saying we're farther out in space than we should be!"

"Well," Sora asked, "How far should we be from Hollow Bastion right now? Can't be too far, right?"

"We should be only twelve parsecs away at the very most," He swatted it once more. "But this thing keeps telling me we're over thirty!"

"Thirty?" Goofy leaned in to see, and he cocked his head at the shaky numbers on the screen. Another slap by Donald, and the screen was obscured with static entirely. He gave an angry quack, a real quack, and Sora barely obscured her laugh with a choking cough in time to keep him from noticing. Thankfully Donald was too busy being enraged at the screen.

Jiminy shook his head. "I knew hitting it wouldn't do any good."

"Don't say 'I told you so'!" Donald warned him, and instead of slapping the screen again, he now hit the armrest in exasperation. And then Sora, inexplicably, felt like she was being pulled into her chair. Just the same as whenever the ship accelerated.

But the screen continued to fizz, and the stars didn't move at all. Even slightly. What was going on?

And then the screen flickered back to life.

Donald blinked in confusion. "Now it says we're two hundred parsecs away," The pulling feeling got stronger. "Two hundred and fifty," Stronger. "Three hundred?"

And stronger yet. Goofy shifted uncomfortably. "Does anyone else feel that?"

"Like the ship is accelerating?" Sora said, "Yep."

"It feels like it's pulling us in a different direction," Jiminy guessed.

And the more she felt for it, the more she realized he was right: The gummi ship felt as though it were being pulled from their right. "Yeah," She agreed, "I think it i-I-I- _I-I-IS!_ "

Midway though her statement the ship lurched again, and they were flying. All of the group screamed as they were thrown back in their chairs while the numbers on the display continued to climb, and then the lights in the cockpit started flickering out. Another flicker, and the display died for good.

The gummi ship continued to hurtle though space, and their speed reached to such an extent that the stars slowly began to glide by, faster, faster, until the gummi ship was moving so fast that Sora nearly lost her breath and the stars began to paint enormous lines of light in their windshield.

 _Highwind_ gave an ominous quake as it sped through space of unknown means, and now the lights flickered out and died along with the display. Another quake, with a creaking sound, and the climate control went silent. The group continued to scream as they flew.

The star-trails were beginning to stop, she realized. Dead ahead in their view the lines stopped around an ominous black circular patch of space where no stars lived, no light, nothing at all. The Dark hole they were searching for.

And the gummi ship was heading straight for it.

Sora dug her nails into the armrests and clenched her jaw as the gummi ship rocked even more. She was terrified parts would start falling off next. Would the wings go first? The landing gear? Donald fitfully hit the shields button over and over again, in desperation for something to try, and all he accomplished was having their view of the Dark hole be momentarily obscured by the hexagonal patterns of the shield. And all along, the Dark hole got bigger, and soon the last of the star-trails were ebbing away at the corners of the windshield.

Then finally, not a moment later, all went black.

Sora couldn't see a thing anymore. Without even the faint light of the star-trails the gummi ship passed by to light the cockpit, she could no longer see the faces of her friends. But she could still hear their screams alongside her own, and she could still hear the continued clicking of the shields button as Donald continued to hit it as much as he could.

All along, they continued to fly. Past the sickening swooping feeling in her chest from falling, past the increasing shaking of the gummi ship that now felt as though it came from beneath the floor, Sora felt the press of the edges of the thalassa charm in her pocket. She shakily let go of the armrest to grab onto it.

And as Sora held onto the charm like a lifeline, hard enough that she worried she'd risk cracking the shells into pieces, she told herself: _Do it for Riku. Do it for Kairi. Do it for everyone. Remember your home. Remember how it fell._

She remembered watching the roots of palm trees claw at the fading ground to stay put. She remembered Riku disappearing into that Dark portal and Kairi fading like a ghost. And Sora remembered holding onto torn wooden boards with enough fear-fueled strength to poke splinters into her fingertips.

" _Kairi gave you this charm to keep an oath that one day you would return safely," The Fairy Godmother proclaimed with her wand held high, and sparkling with a multicolored Light. Around them both, everyone in the library, from Snow White to Cid, was gathered around and holding the charm. Even Jiminy stood on Goofy's wrist and held his own miniature gloved hand to it. "And now, my dear, you must swear to uphold it."_

 _Sora raised her head towards her from the sight of the thalassa shell charm glowing bright gold. The Fairy Godmother was giving her a smile not unlike that of a kind schoolteacher, kind yet firm._

" _I swear."_

 _Her smile widened. "Splendid," She then entirely focused on the charm with her wand glowing bright enough that Sora couldn't look directly at it, and began to chant her spell._

She slowly opened her eyes, and could swear she saw the tiniest speck of light at the end of the Dark hole. At the center of it.

"DONALD—DONALD!" She yelled to get his attention, and the noise of him pushing the button stopped momentarily.

"WHAT?"

"DO YOU SEE THAT?"

"IT'S BLUE!" Jiminy cried.

Sora saw that he was right; The pinprick of light grew larger and took on a distinctly blue tone. And the closer they got, the bluer it became.

"WHAT IS IT?" Sora asked.

This time, it was Goofy that answered.

"I THINK IT'S OUR NEXT TARGE-E-E-E- _ET! AAH-HOO-O-O-EEY!"_ The gummi ship quaked again, and Sora then saw by the meagre growing light that the shield button was no longer putting out shields despite Donald resuming hitting it. He feverishly started flicking certain switches off and on, and then other switches, until finally he pounded his fists on his armrests once more in frustration.

"IT'S NOT WORKING! NOTHING'S WORKING!"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'IT'S NOT WORKING'? WHAT DO WE DO?" Sora screamed.

"JUST HOLD ON TIGHT!" Jiminy yelled. He was holding onto his journal for dear life.

The blue light now loomed in the windshield, and Sora saw that the wings of the gummi ship had fallen away from the sheer speed of how fast they had been going in terminal velocity. And what was left of _Highwind_ was now beginning to stream out thin ribbons of smoke as the group fell into the atmosphere of whatever world they were careening towards now.

At the sight of that light, closer and closer, a part of her mind that was unattached and merely watching the scene unfold could only thing, _Wherever this place is, it's blue. It's so blue._

And it was a blue that wrenched at her Heart, for reasons she couldn't put her finger on. They continued to fall into the light, and now the entire ship was enveloped in it as the fell through the world's sky.

The first thing she saw of this world was waves. Endless waves stretching out all around.

The second thing she saw was water, as the gummi ship slapped against the surface of the world's ocean with such momentum from their fall that the remainder of the hull crumpled like paper beneath the water's force. The group was thrown around in their seats violently from the impact and the straps of her seat's harness jerked Sora around as gravity alternated between trying to pull her out of her seat and putting her right back into it, as the singed remainders of _Highwind_ bobbed up and down on the ocean's surface.

And the third thing Sora saw, once _Highwind_ finally settled upright just above the waves, was the shore of a very familiar island.

The play island.

She was home.

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _Day ?_

"No," Aqua whispered. "Not again. Not this."

The heartless cloud lapped and overlapped against the hellish red sky, forming snakelike figure-eights in its writhing. Within the clusters Riku could no longer see the individual gnarled fingers and toes of the heartless, nor their antennae, nor anything at all of the individuals trapped in its formation but little golden lights.

In that moment he remembered that night on Neverland where the heartless had disobeyed him. How they bundled together to the point they had become a shapeless mass that did not answer to anyone.

And Riku now realized that at that time they had been trying to form _this._

And then he realized that the cloud had begun to head straight for them.

Riku barely dived out of the way in time for the heartless cloud to miss him, and they passed by overhead with enough speed to whip his hair from the wind. He spat out sand and felt the last few grains remaining on his tongue, and Riku shivered. He raised his head to see them high up in the air once more and readying for another pass.

Aqua summoned her keyblade and called forth roiling thunder with a shout, and bolt after bolt after bolt of lightning struck the heartless, causing a few individuals to shrivel up and fall away from the cluster. Their Hearts gleamed as they spiraled away. But meanwhile, the rest of the cluster seemed to only become angered by the strikes, judging by how its movement became erratic. The heartless churned.

Mickey joined her in the spellweaving, frost and flame shooting out to pelt the forming head of the cluster, within which, now that Riku looked, seemed to glow with some sort of a burning yellow core. It must have been what was causing them to form that shape and act in such a way. And as Aqua's lightning continued to strike it without an end in sight, and more heartless continued to fall away, Mickey leapt up on the lowest point of the advancing heartless cluster and did what Riku thought might be the gutsiest thing he'd ever seen up to that moment; He used the individual heartless as footholds and ran along the length of the cluster as it soared through the air.

He used his keyblade to knock away individual heartless from the cluster as best he could, leaving Aqua's lightning to devour them entirely and pick them off. And in between strikes, when Aqua had to hurriedly recharge her magic, Mickey alternated between magic and force to chip away at weaker points in the heartless cloud's form, so that whole segments would fall away and crumple back into individual heartless on the ground. And the individual heartless, once getting back up in spare moments before they were incinerated by lightning, almost seemed confused as they stumbled around. Like they hadn't even known what they were doing.

But that seemed absurd to Riku—didn't they at least have some awareness as they formed? They certainly were aware enough to take orders from him back in Hollow Bastion. And they had to have been at least somewhat aware within the cluster for them to have such targeted movements, like when they aimed right for him. In fact, they looked to be aiming for him again right now, Riku thought worriedly as he scrambled to get up from the sand. Weren't they aware of what they were doing?

Or were the heartless still being controlled? Even down here in the Realm of Darkness, where they were strongest?

If Riku had veins, he would have felt them run with ice at the idea of whatever could possibly be down here that was strong enough to still manage to control the heartless. Even above Maleficent's capability. Even above Riku's, short-lived as that was. Perhaps even above…

…Ansem.

"Riku, _run!_ " Aqua shouted at him, and it brought him back to reality. He had to get out of the way before he could think any more on this. To stay in one place for too long would be to die.

Well, hmm.

Die, huh?

Past the pulling of the sand at his shoes, past the graze of the wind against him, Riku felt sickened at the force of his own shame.

 _(Sora was dead.)_

It was Ansem controlling the heartless here, wasn't it? It was him pulling the strings and trapping the individual heartless to the organism of the cluster here, like some sort of awful hivemind. Only he could manage to do it, it made sense, as they surely answered to no master at all back on Neverland and at that point their movements were nowhere near as organized as this.

 _(Neverland, where you were dumb enough to think Sora was responsible for Kairi's tear. Where you were enough of an asshole to throw it in her face alongside the promise she didn't break.)_

Riku looked back over his shoulder at the cluster sailing through the sky, with Mickey still trying desperately to hold on and pick them off one by one. With Aqua still casting bolt after bolt. The cluster reacted accordingly shaking in specific spots to try and shake Mickey off and flinching back once Aqua's keyblade started charging with bright yellow Light in preparation of more lightning.

Would Ansem have the strength to control the heartless like this even all the way down here if Riku hadn't give up his body and Heart? Would then, instead, Aqua and Mickey be able to continue searching for that keyblade they needed?

 _(They can't even do their jobs right now because they're too busy cleaning up after the mess you helped make.)_

Riku closed his eyes. That voice in the Dark corner of his mind was right. And that made everything so much worse.

Because if it were just spouting off the stupid egomaniacal stuff it'd been muttering all along, he could ignore it at this point. For there was nothing to be proud of anymore. But now it no longer busied itself with fantasy, but with an awful, awful reality that Riku had only just begun to discover he was personally responsible for.

Him, and nobody else. Not even Ansem.

Because it was Riku that helped Ansem make Destiny Islands fall in the very beginning. It was Riku who made Kairi lose her Heart, by putting it in enough danger to set off Aqua's charm through thrusting their home into Darkness. It was Riku who agreed to work with Maleficent and further her plans. It was Riku who kidnapped Alice and Jasmine and helped poison Agrabah's Heart. It was Riku that tried to kidnap Pinocchio, too.

It was Riku who ended up losing himself to the Dark and making himself unworthy of the keyblade, which made it choose Sora and led to her fighting Ansem and stabbing herself to set Kairi free.

To fix his mistakes. To save the people he'd directly put in peril.

 _Him._ Riku. And nobody else.

 _(It should've been you to make that sacrifice.)_

It would only be right, wouldn't it?

Riku took a shuddering breath, and stopped running. He turned around.

By now, the cluster had coiled in on itself and was reforming, heartless rising up out of the ground unbidden and being immediately sucked into the mass. Mickey had fallen off, or leapt, and stood in place firing off fireball after fireball trying to break it apart, but the coil had made a secondary layer of heartless in the shape of a haphazard sphere to protect the bulk of itself. A sphere that was burned away and repaired by countless more heartless rising out of the ground, burned away by every lightning bolt Aqua continued to fire off, alternating with a veritable spectrum of magic bolts of Light that homed in on it.

Sora had sacrificed herself to clean up his mess. And if Riku didn't do something about it, Mickey and Aqua would be soon behind.

He grinded his jaw, and balled his hands into fists as he squeezed his eyes shut. Riku couldn't keep on being a coward, making everything he did be a punishment on the few people he found who cared about him.

 _(Look at them. Look at what they're doing for you. Be grateful for once, won't you?)_

If he had a stomach, it would have churned with shame. If he had his Heart, it would have felt heavy with dread. But if there was one thing Riku still had, that he may well continue to have for the rest of his life, it was his Darkness.

His Darkness, and his alone.

With that thought, Riku opened his eyes. And called Soul Eater to his hand.

* * *

 **SORA**

 _Day ?_

The gummi ship was completely beyond hope of repair. That much was for sure.

Sora's lungs burned as she swam up to the ocean's surface, with Donald and Goofy behind her and Jiminy stashed quickly in one of Goofy's pockets before they had opened the hatch to _Highwind_ for the final time. Donald had cast a minor spell to keep the journal dry despite it being underwater, but it was temporary, and they'd have to swim fast in hopes of reaching the shore before it ran out so their records wouldn't be ruined. She gasped in air as she surfaced and scrubbed away the saltwater from her eyes, taking a second to look around her home while Donald and Goofy finished surfacing.

The first thing Sora saw was that the play island was the only island around. No main island that had formed her home, no distant silhouette on the horizon of Kilika to the east. No promises of any of the other islands in the Destiny Islands archipelago beyond the waves.

Goofy and Donald sucked in air as they surface, and Sora threw them a grin at how they were still unused to the ocean. "I guess Atlantica wasn't enough, huh?"

Donald gave her a quick glare. "Hush, you. Let's get to shore already."

Sure enough, it was Sora that made it there first. She knew the currents around the play island like the back of her hand, and knew precisely where to kick off from the sandbars just under the surface. And as she stumbled onto shore, squeezing the water out of her hair, Sora winced as she watched the last bits of _Highwind_ sink under the surface. The group had managed to save a decent number of potions before evacuating the ship, and none of them kept much on the ship itself making for nothing of value lost, but the sheer breadth of memories made aboard still made the sight of the sinking ship hurt. All of the drawings she'd scribbled onto her bedroom walls now blurring with water, the captain's chair she's snuck onto on the rare nights Donald slept in his bed now under the ocean. All of it gone.

Sora reached into her other pocket, past the spare few elixirs she'd saved, and pulled out the slide Jane had given her. The castle was still visible, if slightly rubbed away, but it no longer spurred any memories. Not with Kairi now gone from her Heart.

And, Sora had learned, someone else was gone now, too.

 _Kairi seemed dubious as she looked out towards the crumbling walls of Radiant Garden._

" _And on that play island, behind the secret place door," She told her, "There was this big white room, with a giant white throne-like chair in the middle."_

" _Really?"_

 _Kairi nodded. "There was these sorts of chains pulsing out of this symbol all over the walls towards it. On the chair sat that boy. He looked about Riku's age."_

 _She went on, "He did nothing but sleep the whole time. I talked to him, but I don't think he ever heard any of it, you know?" Kairi gave a short laugh. "I envied him at times, being able to sleep like you can while all of the stuff over the past month went on and I had to watch it. I never told him too much, just recounting stuff from my early life and here and there remarking on what went on. Just small talk to keep from going crazy, honestly."_

" _What did he look like?"_

 _She had first learned of the other Heart back in their talk in Traverse Town, but only now did she learn a little more of who he was, though she couldn't figure when his Heart might have entered her own. Sora furrowed her brow at the thought of it: She didn't remember anyone else ever flying towards her and going through like a ghost the same way that Kairi had, in the moment they both agreed had to have been when her Heart went into Sora's._

" _He was blond. Short hair, went up in this sort of, uh, coiffed style I guess?" Kairi tried gesturing over her head to suggest it, but all it did was confuse Sora. Was this kid's hair in swirls or something? "There were these belts over his jacket that had a fastener in the same shape as the symbols on the walls, and a bronze thing on his arm that sort of looked like armor."_

They had both puzzled over who he could have been or where he might have entered her Heart for days before giving up. Sora put the slide back in her pocket and figured she shouldn't bother thinking much on the matter now: He was gone, wasn't he? And she definitely had bigger things to worry about right now. Like the fact that they had apparently found themselves back on Destiny Islands. Or, uh, at least one of its islands, anyway.

It took another couple of seconds before Donald and Goofy made their way ashore, and once they did Donald's grumbling about being wet immediately began. Jiminy crawled out of Goofy's pocket with the spotless journal held high and gave a cry of victory.

"It's safe!" He flipped through the pages before closing it again and hugging it. "Oh thank goodness, not a drop of water's on it! Thank you, Donald!"

"Don't mention it," He grumbled, and wrung out the water from his hat. Jiminy ducked back into the pocket before Goofy shook himself dry, Donald squawked as the water rained on him.

Sora laughed. "C'mon, Donald, don't let it ruffle your feathers."

He gave her a hard squint. "Watch it, you."

"What? I thought you could handle the puns like water off a duck's back."

"I said watch it!" He squinted more, and after a couple of seconds he sighed. "I'm just glad you're back."

"Aw," Sora grinned. "Thanks, Donald."

"Ahyuk!" Goofy covered his mouth with a gloved hand. "Donald, you used to get so mad at her jokes that you'd fire off spells!"

"I can still do that, you know," He warned before shaking his head. "Anyway, we've got no time for target practice. We've gotta figure out what's going on!"

"Well, our ship is toast," Sora pointed out helpfully, and threw up her arms at Donald's deadpan stare. "What? It's part of what's going on! And now we're stuck on the play island from my home, except for some reason I can't see any of the other islands, and I'm not sure how we're here if Destiny Islands fell to the Darkness…Oh, crap."

She froze at that thought.

"Guys, we're in the Realm of Darkness."

"Sure is bright in the Realm of Darkness," Goofy remarked as he looked up at the sun.

"You're right," Sora glanced around. There was no evidence of the destruction that had been wrought on that final night of Destiny Islands. No broken boards on the kids' shabbily built obstacle course. The little wooden shack was perfectly intact. Not even a single broken palm frond to show that the night had happened at all. "What's going on?"

" _That's_ what I was asking!"

"Well sor-ry I misinterpreted—" Her snarky remark was cut off with a gasp at the sight of a familiar figure upon the shore. A boy with silver hair that she'd known all her life.

Riku.

She wanted to run to him. More than anything. But Sora held herself back at the sight of that Dark suit like a second skin, the rustle of the white overskirt skimming past his knees. _(Not-Riku)._ Ansem. She knew there wasn't any way for him to have it now, not when she destroyed it herself, but Sora checked his hands anyway for the vicious silhouette of a Dark keyblade that forebode nothing but destruction.

She let herself relax just slightly when she saw that his hands were empty. Just slightly, but not entirely.

Donald and Goofy had both gone quiet when they spotted him too, and Jiminy was now hidden away again.

But Ansem didn't look at them. He wasn't even looking at the gummi ship now fallen to the ocean floor. Instead he was just watching the horizon.

She began to walk over to him. And with a quickly muttered spell to dry their clothes, Donald and Goofy followed.

As they got close Ansem said, without turning around, "All these years later, and this world is still too small."

Sora bristled at how she couldn't hear Riku's voice mixed in with his anymore. It riled up an instinct somewhere that was all too prone to fear. An instinct that worried Riku wasn't here anymore. That he would never be here again.

 _No._ He wasn't gone. He couldn't be.

He was just buried a little deeper is all.

"Let Riku go."

He continued on. "I suppose the boy and I can agree in that regard—not of letting him go, mind you, but of how stifling this world is. 'Destiny Islands,'" Ansem huffed out a short laugh. "Such a grand name for a ramshackle stretch of sand and huts. 'Destiny' would imply this place has meaning. The birthplace of heroes, perhaps. The land where things unfold. But all who walked here were nothing more than small-minded people in a small world, doomed to ignorance of the wonders just outside their sight."

"I said, _let him go._ "

"I was almost one of them. But I knew better. I always knew better. I just didn't know how to get free. To a Heart seeking freedom, these islands were nothing more than a prison, with the ocean as my warden," Ansem turned to face them, and his eyes—Riku's eyes—were bright gold. "The bars to my cell. Don't you understand? I can't let him go. He is far too valuable. As are you now, I suppose, if only for the key that chose you and you alone."

Those eyes. They weren't the green she remembered so well. Sora raised her hand to grab at her necklace, and didn't know she had done so until she felt the points of the crown against her fingers.

 _It wasn't long after Sora's resurrection from being a heartless that Kairi gave back her necklace without preamble beyond a, "Here. This is yours."_

" _What's—Oh," Sora held the necklace in cupped hands and stared at it with a mixture of emotions she couldn't identify._

 _("It can connect us.")_

 _("_ _I gave it to you to keep a promise with, and all you've done is break that promise over and over again.")_

 _That wasn't true. There was one emotion she recognized: Regret._

" _I hadn't known it was so important to both of you until he'd taken it back," Kairi said. "I'd only ever thought it was just a necklace until he said something, like you just really liked it and that's why you wore it all these years."_

" _That's another reason why I've worn it," Sora chuckled._

" _You don't…blame yourself for any of this, do you?" Kairi asked. "Because you shouldn't. I don't know what promise you guys had made that he was talking about, but I knew you never forgot us after the islands fell. Not just because I was watching," She added sheepishly, "But because I knew it even in my Heart. You would never do such a thing."_

 _Was that true? She wasn't entirely sure anymore. It seemed Sora hadn't known herself as well as she thought she did, because otherwise why would Riku have accused her of such things?_

 _She shifted from foot to foot. And Sora thought of all the rest of what had been said in their reunion. How it seemed to Riku that Sora had betrayed him at every point their journeys intertwined. She knew now that at that point Riku had already come too close to the Darkness, that it was poisoning him, but it still didn't shake the part of her that was still a little kid who thought he was always right, even when he wasn't. The Voice from before all of this began had even warned her to trust herself, to listen to her own judgement, but it was hard to undo a lifetime of listening to someone else's._

 _But then…in all the years since she had helped complete their group, Sora had found Kairi to be the smartest. That was what she told herself back on Neverland, hadn't she? That Riku was the strongest, Kairi was the smartest, and Sora was the one who brought the cheer._

" _This whole time, I was just trying to do what I thought was right," Sora replied. "And I figured that he was trying to do the same."_

" _Maybe he was," Kairi reminded her, "But Ansem got to him first. Not Donald and Goofy. Not the keyblade."_

 _Ansem, and not the keyblade. Not Donald and Goofy. And that was the difference._

 _Riku had only managed to take the keyblade by force in the end, through ways Sora didn't know of. Was it truly just through having a stronger will at that point, or something else? 'If you want something, why not take it?' Had he really only needed to want it badly enough?_

 _But Sora had managed to get it back by not wanting it back at all. She had taken it back through reminding Riku of the importance of working together. Or, Sora guessed it was because of that. There could well have been a million other things at play there. But she figured it didn't matter anyways, because somehow Ansem had forged a Dark keyblade of his own to fight to the death with. Using Riku's Heart and body._

 _("You gotta stick by Riku no matter what. If he starts getting lost, or maybe he starts wandering down a Dark, scary path, just like through those bushes, I need you to stay with him and keep him safe.")_

 _And now Riku was wandering down that path once more. Except this time there would be no riverbed or creek or anything at the other side of the hedge, but only the Dark solitude of death or worse._

 _She had to keep him safe._

 _With that thought in mind, Sora opened the clasp of the necklace and put it back around her neck again, and felt the safe, familiar feeling of the pendant against her Heart. And then she made her decision._

She had a job to do.

With that thought, Sora looked Ansem in the eye. And called the keyblade to her hand.

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _Day ?_

It was easier to run towards the heartless, he found, than to run away.

Perhaps it was because Riku, though he would be loath to admit it aloud, had a death-wish. Perhaps it was because he hated Ansem with every fiber of his being, more than he could stand, and the heartless worked as a stand-in for the monster who didn't even deign to show his face in front of them. Perhaps it was because Aqua and Mickey were alone before in cleaning up the mess he helped make, and Riku was done with making his problems anyone else's responsibility.

Or maybe it was simply because he was angry.

But whichever the reason, Soul Eater thrummed as Riku tore through heartless. He could feel the Dark of himself relish in it, blood bitter and hungry to tire itself out after all of the built-up anger and self-hatred and helplessness was coming to a head, but Riku didn't let it go far. Not yet. Ansem was still out there somewhere, and Riku would destroy him with anything he had. Even if it destroyed him with it.

 _(It'd be the best way to go, really.)_

Yes. Yes, it would.

He continued to fight. When the cloud came close, sparkling with arcs of electricity, Riku jammed the tip of his sword into any weaker points in the assembled heartless he could reach and pried them away, making for whole groups of the creatures scattering to the ground where he picked them off, and this time Hearts came out of the heartless when he did. Riku could hear Mickey above having leapt onto the snakelike assemblage once more and doing the same, and Aqua all along continuing to hurl spell after spell onto everything around.

She was so distracted with her work that it took a while before Aqua noticed he had joined them, and specifically, what he wielded.

"Riku!" Aqua barked at him, before firing off another bolt. "I told you to put that thing away, _now!_ "

"No!" Riku dug Soul Eater into an opening in the heartless cluster, and claws and gnarled feet alike fitfully kicked at him, clawing at him. But no blood came of it—Riku had no body to bleed.

He felt a harsh grip on his shoulder yank him away, and Riku spun around to come face to face with an infuriated Aqua.

"Don't be stupid, Riku, you're going to get yourself lost to the Darkness entirely! Put. It. Away!"

 _Lost to the Darkness? Too late for that,_ he thought. "I can't let you clean up my mess! I caused this!"

"Xehanort started this mess long before you chose the Darkness, Riku," Aqua fired off another bolt with her free hand and yanked them both away as the cloud of heartless made a lunge for them. They both landed roughly in the sand before getting back to their feet. "All you did was just help give him a way to return to finish the job. You didn't have as much to do with this as you think."

"I had everything to do with this! You heard me tell you guys what I'd done!"

"And if it wasn't you here right now, it'd be someone else!" She roared, and the strength of her lightning increased with her fury. Aqua rounded back on him. "Xehanort may plan and plan decades in advance, but he's not as picky as you'd think. If it weren't you, he would have chosen someone else himself if he had to. He already did it once before. But the world outside of this place needs you, damn it!"

"No, it doesn't! Nowhere needs a murderer!"

"They'll need a murderer if he's willing to fight for the Light and has the Mark on his Heart!" Another bolt. Another cluster of heartless gone.

"I don't _have_ a Heart! I told you what Ansem said, all I have left is my mind!"

"A mind's worth more than you think, Riku. I don't know if you'll be able to wield a keyblade with just a mind, but you can get your Heart and keyblade back with one!"

He clutched Soul Eater tightly. "I don't have a keyblade, either!"

"Keyblades always follow the Bequeathed. No matter whether the Marked Heart is more Dark or Light," Aqua growled as her keyblade ceased to fire off magic, and she checked her pockets.

Riku looked over towards the roiling heartless, another segment broken away by Mickey's work. But then the cloud rounded up on itself, circling higher, and rolled in such a way that gravity forced Mickey off its fractured back. Mickey yelped as he fell, and Riku saw him barely right himself in time to control his landing.

Riku thought back to how Hearts had come out of the heartless he'd slain with Soul Eater just minutes ago, when they never had before. Just the same way they had back when he'd had Sora's keyblade.

So he didn't have a keyblade, he thought to himself, but for some reason the weapon he had was doing the same job now. On the heartless, at least. Riku doubted it'd do anything like seal keyholes or anything else wondrous like he'd figured it could do. _Good enough for right now, I guess._

He looked back to Aqua, still distracted with desperately searching for an ether. And then to Mickey, who was running after the approaching heartless cloud and only able to do so much. They needed his help whether or not they were willing to admit it. Maybe Aqua was right about the Realm of Light still needing a murderer's help, but Ansem wasn't exactly in the Realm of Light right now, was he?

No. He wasn't. He was somewhere nearby, Riku was sure of it. The way the heartless were acting right now was proof of that.

Like how they were now aiming straight for him.

Riku reared back Soul Eater and dashed away from Aqua, ignoring her yells for him to stop, so that the heartless would ignore her. He ran past Mickey, who was calling for him to stop as well, so that they would miss him too. They both had done enough for him already.

The heartless wanted him, and him alone, and Riku would meet them halfway.

* * *

 **SORA**

 _Day ?_

"Come, guardian."

An enormous hand as black as coal caught her keyblade mid-swing.

She looked up from Ansem. Behind him now lurked a large humanoid heartless, not unlike the one that she'd fought here on this very island before her home fell to the Darkness. Though it was much smaller than that one, Sora saw, it retained the same Heart-shaped chasm in its chest and crooked flourishes to its form. The heartless regarded them with a glowing yellow glare past its muzzle made of whitened tendons like bandages, that went on to stretch down its torso and encircle a gap shaped like its missing Heart.

 _("Even the Heart of one world is not enough for him.")_

And neither was the Heart of one person enough for Ansem. That led to another thought: Was this monstrous thing _Riku's_ heartless? Or was it the heartless of the other poor soul that had gotten trapped by Ansem somewhere along the way, even before he was Apprentice Xehanort?

Regardless of which it was, one thing was for sure—Riku was trapped in there.

 _("When you disappeared," Kairi gripped her arms tightly enough that Sora could see small crescents from her nails begin to form. "He screamed. I never heard Riku sound like that before.")_

Sora fruitlessly yanked against the heartless' grip on her keyblade and dismissed it from her hand to rear back and summon it again to swipe. The heartless tried to catch it again, but Sora learned from last time, and just barely changed her trajectory in time to make it miss.

"Riku!" She swung, only managing to strike the heartless as it blocked. " _Riku!_ I know you're in there somewhere!" She swung again, and her blows were punctuated by Donald's magic. The heartless wrapped Ansem in a bear hug to protect him from the attacks, a jarring sight considering Ansem still wore Riku's face. "You can fight this! I know you can!"

"Don't bother," Ansem laughed. He and the heartless leapt away to gain distance and leapt again as Sora pursued. "Your voice can no longer reach him where he is."

"Shut up!"

Ansem raised his hand high into the air, and a Dark cloudy sphere formed within it that grew to encompass all of him. And then it grew to encompass a wide circle around him. The trio stepped back.

Ansem's laughter echoed all around them now, reflected back at them from over the water, the palms. Like he was speaking from everywhere at once.

The trio clustered together with their backs to one another.

"The boy made the right choice. Giving himself to me, allowing me to show him the ways of glory. The ways of the Dark. It is a shame he tried to back out the second he thought everything wasn't going to plan," He sighed, and the trees swayed gently in the breeze. The Dark sphere began to dissipate, and the trio could just barely see a figure within, followed by the hulking silhouette of the heartless.

"But no matter," Ansem concluded. "He will understand. All of you will understand."

The last traces of the sphere gave away, leaving nothing more than a Dark circle on the ground, and revealing Ansem had taken on his other form. That of a grown man with tanned skin and silver hair, wearing a black overcoat detailed with grey paneling towards the bottom and belts crisscrossing just under his collar. The heartless emblem gleamed on his chest.

Xemnas was right.

 _("Still, though, who knew just a simple heartless could cause damage like this?")_

"He really is just another heartless," Sora muttered.

"He sure is!" Goofy held out his shield. "We can take him!"

"Yeah," Donald agreed, "Together!"

They were right. Every heartless they'd encountered on their journey so far had fallen to their work. And Sora had already fought Ansem once and won, hadn't she? It seemed as though she needed to remind herself of that fact as well, not just Kairi. Sora had already destroyed the Dark keyblade. She had already defeated Maleficent. All that was left was to defeat this guy too.

Simple enough, right?

"All for one, and one for all," Sora replied. And then she gave chase across the shore.

Ansem kicked off of the ground and hovered several feet above, which was _completely_ unfair, so that she could only hope to reach his shins at best with her keyblade. From behind him, the heartless acted as though it was going to reach for her and her friends, before harshly jerking away and clutching its head. Ansem whipped around to give it a scowl.

She immediately aimed her keyblade to throw a fireball at him, matched by Donald. Ansem straightened as they hit, his coat and undershirt beneath burned away to reveal reddened skin that had already begun to heal over with his garments repairing themselves, and Ansem regarded them with palpable distaste.

To that, Sora's only response was another fireball aimed straight to the face. "You're supposed to be fighting us!"

The heartless immediately ceased clutching at itself to reach around to catch the fireball before it could land, and Dark smoke trailed out of its hand where it hit. Ansem looked unimpressed as the heartless swerved around to float behind him again. "I don't need to fight you at all," He replied.

The Dark circle Ansem had left behind on the shore began to writhe behind the trio.

"There is no outcome to this fight in which you can win," he began. "There is no ending in which you save the worlds in the way that you planned. If you continue to try and fight me, your work will be in vain."

 _("A meaningless effort," The figure looked to the door in the cavern wall. "One who knows nothing understands nothing.")_

She was about to fire off another blast of flame before Goofy and Donald had to yank her away from the Dark circle, which was now writhing even worse to the point that it had begun to thrash, its bruise-black surface alive with countless movements within. Sora landed roughly in the sand alongside her friends as they looked on, unnerved.

"I may not have my hard-won keyblade at the moment, thanks to you," Ansem announced. "Only a temporary setback. I shall have the Hearts to remake it soon enough. Thousands upon thousands of them. Perhaps millions."

"No, you won't," Sora shouted. "We'll stop you!"

"You cannot. Aren't you listening? I already told you that there is no outcome to this in which you may win. I was not boasting when I said such a thing," Ansem raised his hand into a fist, and the Dark circle was now sputtering with black smoke. "It was simply the truth. For the Dark is as inevitable as the night. The Dark is the beginning, and it is the end. And the Dark, you fools, is the one truth that binds us all."

Finally, the Dark circle erupted, and a sheer torrent of heartless came hurtling through.

"And I am nothing," Ansem concluded, "If not Darkness!"

The trio could do nothing but watch dumbfounded as the heartless continued to pour out. To the point that a great towering pillar of them shot up into the air, stories above, before the cloud of heartless curled in on itself and formed a great snakelike cluster in midair.

"What is that?" Goofy whimpered.

"It's just heartless," Donald said, awe-struck. "Bunches of heartless."

Sora looked away from the spectacle unfolding above back to Ansem. He was watching the heartless with a look of deep concentration on his face, and Sora flashed back to the beginning of their last encounter back on Hollow Bastion, when he had snapped his fingers and the rumbling of approaching heartless began quickly thereafter.

She watched the guardian heartless, still lurking behind Ansem, and remembered how it reached for them one moment and stopped the next. How it had clutched to its head. Even now, as it did nothing but float there, its movements kept going jerky. Like it was trying to shake something off.

Like it was trying to resist Ansem.

It didn't take much to put two and two together, but could it be useful?

Maybe the trio could take advantage of the heartless' resistance, Sora figured, it might be able to hold off the heartless from reacting quickly or following some of Ansem's orders. But was there any way to help it break free entirely? Did she even want it to break free entirely? Because that would mean risking facing two enemies instead of one. The keyblade brought out the worst in heartless, after all. Not only the fact that they must be in the Realm of Darkness right now, which could not bode well to try fighting heartless on their home turf. They'd be stronger here.

Sora had fought Ansem before when he wore Riku's face. That had by far been the hardest fight she'd ever faced, even when considering it as objectively as possible: Presuming that Ansem had been using only Riku's speed and strength, without bolstering either too much (which in all likelihood he probably was, even with how weirdly distracted he had been with the necklace in the meanwhile), it took everything she'd had to win. And even then Sora had faced the very real prospect of losing, with the difference in physical strength and speed and not using magic. Only thinking out of the box and remembering what Riku had taught her in their spars over the years had helped her win.

But now, with Ansem using what looked like his true form? Forget it. She preferred to rely on magic so much throughout her journey for a reason—Not only because it was way more fun, though admittedly that formed a majority of the reasoning, but because it vastly helped even the odds for her.

It wasn't the sort of thing she'd ever admit aloud, and she absolutely _hated_ being reminded of it for the fact that it was a weakness, but Sora knew she was just a kid. And that that changed a lot about how she could effectively fight. She obviously wasn't as tall as someone like Ansem or Xemnas, or even Riku, and that that would affect things like grappling when her opponent had a longer reach, or running when they had a longer stride. She knew that the differences in physical strength alone between a grown adult and a kid like her were enormous. And Sora knew that if she could win against opponents like them at all, she had to think creatively and use everything she had.

Which usually boiled down to using magic.

Donald's shield spell flaring to life around the trio forced Sora out of her thoughts as the heartless cloud smacked uselessly against the surface of the spell. Sora watched closely how the individual heartless behaved, how most of them clawed against the shield spell itself, making a tinkling noise from their fingertips as they fruitlessly tried to attack, but others were…clawing at themselves?

She walked close enough to the barrier that she could feel Donald's glare, and looked closer at the heartless.

"I can't hold this thing forever," He warned. "Don't push it!"

"Sora, uh," Goofy poked out from behind his shield, and Sora could see Jiminy in his front pocket momentarily peep out the flap before ducking back in again. "Shouldn't you be keepin' your distance a bit? Donald's right, you know."

She pointed at one heartless that was clawing at itself, and said, "Guys, look at it."

Donald peered at it, and Goofy cautiously leaned closer. He studied the heartless alternating between clawing at the spell's surface, flinching back, and holding its head instead. In his pocket, Jiminy poked his head out and looked as well.

"Why," Jiminy said, "It looks like it's trying to stop itself from attacking!"

"Yeah," Goofy agreed. "It's acting just like how your little heartless friend did last time!"

"Exactly! Like it's trying to not listen to an order or something!" Sora exclaimed. "Ansem's got to be the one making this heartless tornado-cloud-thing. He was working with Maleficent, right? And she was controlling the heartless, too," She pointed behind them back towards Ansem and his guardian heartless, whom he had returned to glaring at with a look of concentration. The heartless was still moving erratically, but much less so with Ansem focusing on it specifically, at the cost of the heartless cloud beginning to clutch at themselves even more with fewer reaching for the trio. "See? He can only actively control so many at a time."

"I wonder if that might be because it's daytime?" Goofy said. He scratched his temple as he stared up at the sky.

He could be right. Sora inspected the island again. Apart from what was damaged the heartless cloud's continued torrent, now snaking in on itself from the disarray, nothing was touched. So far all that had fallen was that same piece of one platform that refused to stay on if anyone stepped on it, that had tripped her up in one race not long before the final days of the islands. The Dark circle on the ground was still open, but no more heartless were coming out.

And the most important part—If this were in the Realm of Darkness, wouldn't Ansem likely have perfect control over the heartless? And wouldn't they be stronger?

…Were they even in the Realm of Darkness at all?

"You're right," Sora gaped. "What's going on here?"

"What's going on here is that _I am about to drop this shield!_ "

Jiminy ducked back into the pocket hastily as Sora and Goofy whipped around towards Donald, who was now shaking slightly from the effort of upholding the shield spell. He scowled at them both as sweat beaded on his forehead.

"Do you have any ethers?" Sora asked.

"Already used them! Holding up against all those heartless is a lot harder than it looks!" In his free hand, he shook an empty ether bottle to prove his point.

She hurriedly dismissed her keyblade to rifle through her pockets, but didn't come up with any ethers. Neither did Goofy, after a cursory check of his own pockets. All they had were some potions and elixirs, both of which they needed to conserve if things turned dire. Which, Sora thought with a nervous glance outside the shield, they might soon be with Donald out of commission.

"Guys? What do we do when the shield goes away?" Sora looked back and forth between the heartless cloud and Ansem, who was still distracted with re-exerting control over his own guardian heartless that was still visibly struggling.

Goofy gulped. "I guess we'll have to run for it!"

"Where?"

"Anywhere!" Donald snapped.

Sora threw out her hands. "If we go one direction, we're running straight towards Ansem! If we go the other direction, we're still catching the tail end of that heartless cloud!"

"Choose one or think of another way!" Donald started to slump as the edges of the shield began to disintegrate. "Aren't you supposed to know every inch of this place?!"

That was true. She watched the heartless worriedly as she tried to think. Maybe they could try hiding right up against one of the plateaus over by the tallest platform where she and Riku used to start the obstacle course on, but she'd have to dismiss her keyblade and the heartless probably could sense their Hearts anyway with them out in the open. Darn it. Maybe they could run around to the other side of the island? The heartless would still pursue, but maybe they could try hiding in the secret place and have a second to figure things out. It wasn't as if the Heart of Destiny Islands was behind that door anymore, she thought with a tinge of grim humor. Maybe the heartless wouldn't be immediately lured over there now.

Sora lit up at the thought. The secret place, it was, then.

The shields started to dissolve a little more, and she gestured for Donald and Goofy to follow. "On the count of three, we gotta run. I know where to go."

"We don't have until three," Donald lowered his staff and sagged more, now that the shields were disappearing for sure. Sora jumped as a heartless started to try and make its way in, and pulled onto her friends' hands as they started to run.

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _Day ?_

He had raised Soul Eater towards the heartless cloud and braced himself, but all Riku felt in the next moment was a strong gust coming from either side of him. He cautiously opened his eyes.

The heartless cloud had parted perfectly in half around him and sped past, the light of their eyes forming long smears of gold against the reddened sky. To one side, Aqua stood still with a blackened hand reached out towards him, her angry expression ebbed with her shock at the heartless' new behavior. Just beyond stood Mickey, similarly dumbfounded, with Dark smoke still dissipating around him from the stragglers he had been taking care of before they lunged at Riku.

Riku slowly turned to look behind him towards where they were going. And it appeared that the heartless were smoothly recombining back into one cloud to go through some sort of Dark circle that had appeared in the sand, bruised-black and flowing with Darkness.

The heartless were leaving?

The gusts from either side of him slowed and the last of the cloud recombined as it entered back into the Dark hole, and for the next minute the three of them were deathly still, silent, waiting for any sign that the heartless would return. And when he was even only slightly sure they would not, Riku felt himself begin to relax somewhat. Soul Eater stayed in his hand.

That is, until Aqua marched up. "Damn it, Riku! What did I tell you?"

"I couldn't just let you guys—"

"I said, _what did I tell you?_ "

"I know, okay?! I know I'm not supposed to be using that thing, but—but—" Riku felt a strange mix of shame and indignant anger then, like being yelled at by a parent he wanted to make happy when he knew he was doing the right thing in this situation. He had never felt like that before, and he wasn't sure why he was feeling this way now. He didn't have any point of reference for this. It left an odd feeling in his bones as it clashed with his reactive need to both discuss the fact that he was expendable _(you hadn't used your life for much of any good so far until now, haven't you?)_ in order to make better use of himself and hide that he thought such a way, because he had already screwed up enough already and didn't want to make them sad or mad when they'd done a lot for him by taking care of the heartless for him. Especially not here, in the Realm of Darkness where such emotions could be dangerous.

He slumped. "Please, just let me help." _Don't throw yourselves away for me._

This time, it was Mickey that came forward. "You can help us search for the keyblade. Like Aqua said, you helped us find this place by thinking of home," He gave an encouraging smile. "You know this place better than either of us, right, Riku? I'm sure we'll find it in no time!"

Riku turned to Aqua, who pushed a hand through her bangs as she sighed. "Yes. But we'll need to move quickly in case those things come back again. And whatever you do, _don't_ risk yourself by summoning that thing again. I'm serious, Riku."

"She's right, Riku," Mickey added.

He glanced between them for several seconds, and there were countless things he wanted to say, things he both did and didn't have the words for. Things he had never needed the words for before, and never thought he would.

It was ironic, Riku supposed, that such things were inscribed on the walls of his Heart and yet had long been refused to dare take up space within his mind. That had, to his endless frustration over the years, tried to take up space anyways. Yet now that there might, at long last, be a chance to say such things he couldn't gather the courage.

Riku was supposed to be the strongest of his friends, but this took an entirely different strength than the sort he knew of.

And all he could muster was an, "Okay."

They walked quickly around the perimeter of their half of the island, peeking over and around the Dark growths and debris everywhere. The trio soon discovered that the entrance they had arrived from, to the rest of the Realm of Darkness, was gone, presumably after that deafening crack earlier that had marked the turning of the play island into the hellish counterpart it was now.

"The only place we haven't checked yet is the secret place," Riku remembered.

"Secret place?" Aqua asked.

He nodded. "That was where the door to the islands' Heart was, the door I told you about earlier," Riku said. "It's this cave me and Sora discovered when we were little and hung out there sometimes with Kairi, when she came to Destiny Islands. We never really came up with a name we could all agree on for it, so we just continued to call it the secret place, even though it didn't stay much of a secret forever," He laughed at the memory of when Wakka had accidentally discovered it himself in the search for a stray blitzball. "If it's nowhere around here, the keyblade's gotta be in there. And the cave could work as a hideout if those heartless come back, maybe."

Or maybe not. But it was worth a shot if nothing else, they didn't have any other options anymore.

Mickey hardly needed to move away the shrubbery as he walked through the entrance, whereas both Riku and Aqua had to move away the branches and leaves and awkwardly duck under the more steadfast flora. He could feel another smile form at the comparison—back before all of this happened, it had been a sort of rite of passage among all the kids in the group as to who had to duck under the branches and who didn't.

But the faint traces of his mirth died at reaching the inside of the secret place. For everywhere, _everywhere,_ lingered all of the drawings Sora had scribbled on the walls over the years.

He didn't say a word as they walked, and could feel eyes on him from every spare inch of the room. A glare from the little dog Sora had scrawled down along the bottommost rock right there back in second grade. Sneers from the bunch of mermaids to the dog's right. And, as the group entered into the main room of the cavern, three matching scowls aimed right at him from the portraits he, Sora, and Kairi had done of themselves right beside the door. Even the paopu fruit drawing above them seemed to glower with an angry light.

But whatever keyblade Mickey was searching for was not here. Apart from them, the drawings, and the door, the room was empty.

"It's not here," Mickey unwittingly echoed his thoughts, and his overlarge ears bowed slightly.

Riku walked over to the door.

It hadn't changed a bit since that final night, nor from all the days of his life spent staring at it in efforts to come up with a way to open it before. It was visibly weathered from age as it always had been, but not a single scratch nor stain marred its surface.

He reached up his hand towards the door, and flinched back at the last second. "To think," He said to himself, "This is what started it all."

It hadn't turned out to be some abandoned art project or a joke or anything as simple as he'd hoped. Instead, the door had turned out to be the catalyst for destiny, for fate. An end and a beginning. A door that opened to anywhere at all in his dreams and opened to the death of a home in the waking world.

Riku jumped slightly when he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Aqua, and she stared up at the door as well with an unreadable expression.

"I'm not going to lie to you," She told him. She tore her eyes away from the door to give him a heavy look, that had so much history behind it Riku could only guess at. "A lot of what you told us, even if Ansem was responsible for so much of it, even if he could have still made everything come to this point with someone else if you hadn't agreed to his terms…the truth of what happened is that you did agree. And that you did help him and gave up your Heart and body for him to use."

And that both of those truths were what changed everything. "Yes."

"But the truth of it is that you didn't know anything of Light and Darkness then. Or Hearts, or heartless, or anything of the worlds beyond your home. You didn't know the truth of Ansem, then, or Maleficent. You didn't know the keyblade's burden. All you knew the moment you opened this door was that you were hurt, and that you wanted to make it stop. That you wanted to do what you thought was the right thing."

"Riku," She grabbed his other shoulder, and shook her head. "One of the hardest things in life is to know when the blame falls on you, and when it doesn't. Some people are like Ansem and Xehanort, who never think they're at fault because they don't care about the consequences of what they've done. Other people blame everyone else other than them because they don't want to admit they were the cause of their misfortune. And then there's people like you and me—people who made mistakes and think they've reached the end of the line. That there is no coming back from what happened."

A part of him that had long since gone quiet on his journey, that hadn't spoken a word since almost the very beginning until the end, when it had warned him not to choose glory and darkness and to not take Ansem's hand, woke up. And it said but four words; _She's telling the truth._

She let go of him and inspected her blackened hands. "I know what I look like, Riku. I know what it means. And I know that you would have never done any of the things you've done if you knew what would happen from the very beginning," Aqua lowered her hands and looked him in the eye. "Because I know I would've never done a lot of what I did if I knew what it would end up in, either. _But this is not the end for us._ We've all made mistakes, and we will come back from them. But for you to accomplish that for yourself, I need you to understand that your life has value, Riku. Even if you don't recognize it."

"And even though Sora's gone," Aqua concluded. "That doesn't mean it's the end of the worlds. But it will mean the worlds' end if you think of this as your end. Do you understand?"

He did.

Riku may have disagreed on some things—namely, that all of what had happened _was_ his fault, no matter what Aqua said otherwise—but she was right in that the worlds would suffer for it if he gave up now.

" _They'll need a murderer if he's willing to fight for the Light and has the Mark on his Heart!"_

He didn't have a Heart. And he didn't have a body. But if there was one thing Riku had left to his name, aside from his Darkness, it was the will to fight.

If Aqua was right about him getting a keyblade of his own one day, against all odds and the Darkness that would be undoubtedly forever a part of his Heart if he ever got it back, the worlds would need him to help them. They would need him to stop Ansem for good. And they would need him to clean up after his own messes for once to rebuild what he'd wrought upon the worlds in his journey.

Even if all he had right now to fight with was Soul Eater, he would do it. Riku would use Darkness if he had to, to fight for good. For Light. And most of all, for everyone who fell along the way. Because in the end if there was anything Riku wasn't, would never allow himself to be ever again, it was to become everything he hated in the people he hated most.

"I understand," Riku smiled. It was a slow, hopeful smile, the kind that didn't leave as fast as it appeared. The kind of smile that was real, for the first time in a very, very long time. "I'll do it. I'll be good."

And that was a promise.

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _Day Thirteen_

It had been a week now since Sora and her friends left, and still no sign of the worlds being saved.

She had been trying to ignore the growing feeling of dread in her bones as they worked on laying the groundwork on what was to be done to restore Radiant Garden, but none of them knew quite where to begin. There was so much to do, and more to be done the more you looked around.

Kairi had taken to watching the sky in the evenings before bed. She felt sick at sleeping in the former citadel, with it being where she'd laid involuntarily and unable to move for so long, and so watching the sky had fulfilled a twofold purpose: To help give her something to busy herself with long enough so that she'd fall asleep regardless of where she had to sleep for the night, and to watch for any signs of Sora's mission being fulfilled.

The problem with the latter, though, was that she had no idea of what to look for. Shooting stars would be a sign of failure, for another world falling to the Dark. Kairi was certain of that. But what would be a sign of the worlds' return?

That Darkness at the edge of her senses would be gone for sure. But still it lingered. And so Kairi still worried.

She almost jumped at the sound of footsteps coming up behind her in the courtyard. Kairi had taken to watching the sky here in particular, where the ghosts of anemones and snapdragons still lingered against the cracked pavement. She turned to see it was Aerith.

"Another late night, tonight?"

Kairi blinked. "Have you been keeping track of me staying up?"

"Leon did. He can't sleep either, unless he does rounds with the others," Aerith sat down beside her. "And you're always out here. Are you looking for a sign of things going well for them?"

"How did you know?"

Aerith shrugged.

She paused for a moment before finally turning back towards the sky. "Yeah," Kairi sighed. "It's just…been on my mind a lot. How will we know it worked? How will we know if they won and everything's going to be okay, if they won't be able to come back and tell us afterward?"

Aerith turned to the sky as well, at that. She hummed.

"The Fairy Godmother said that everyone who went missing or off-world should start coming back. Maybe we'd see people we haven't seen in years," She supposed as her hand fluttered to the ribbon in her hair.

"You're thinking of Zack?"

"How did you know?" Aerith teased before hugging her knees. "Yeah. I was. But not just him—A lot of the people I remember from before Radiant Garden fell. Cloud, Tifa, Barret. Marlene. Maybe even Elmyra."

Kairi had only just begun to learn of all the people of Radiant Garden, and she was learning of more every day. She wasn't sure if she should feel robbed or not: There had been a whole life waiting for her here before the apprentices' work had spun out of control so horribly. Who would Kairi have ended up becoming if nothing had ever happened? Would any of her family return, if Sora succeeded? Would her adoptive mom and dad have found someone else to take into their lives back on Destiny Islands?

Before all of this began, she'd wondered off and on what her home was like, her real parents. But her home was broken and poisoned, and Kairi was terrified her family would be worse off than that. If they could be dead.

What would Kairi do if Sora succeeded, and found out her family was all dead but for herself? Or if they were alive, but destroyed beyond all recognition?

Before this journey began, she didn't think she wanted to know. And even now she still wasn't sure.

But now there was also a very real chance she would never know at all. If Sora never succeeded.

"And if it didn't work?" Kairi asked quietly. "How will we know if they lost?"

For a long time, Aerith didn't answer. Kairi had begun to think she didn't have an answer at all until she replied, "We can't think about that. All we can do now is believe in them."

* * *

 **SORA**

 _Day ?_

They never made it to the secret place. They never even made it to the other side of the play island.

In the desperate scramble to get to the far side of the shore, where Sora and Goofy half-carried Donald when he failed to keep up the pace alongside them and the heartless came way too close for comfort, the trio ran in on a sight that was unfamiliar to her home—dozens of jagged Dark growths out of the ground that reached towards the sky.

"What…?" Sora trailed off as she tentatively poked the tip of the closest one, and felt the edge of it bite into the pad of her fingertip.

Apart from the Dark circle on the shoreline, where the edges of the waves coming in for the tide dropped off into places unknown from whence the heartless had originally came, there had been no other evidence of the fall of Destiny Islands to the Darkness. Everything had been as it originally was, untouched. Untainted. Until now.

"These hadn't been here when the islands fell," She explained to them. "You used to be able to run through to the other side of the play island. I don't know what happened."

"I am what happened," Ansem said from somewhere behind.

All three of them turned towards him slowly, and Sora saw that the heartless cloud was now waving about aimlessly, perhaps completely undirected at the moment. Ansem's focus was not on them.

But now the guardian heartless lurking behind him was no longer quaking. It had gone completely still.

"What's wrong with this place?" Sora demanded. "What did you do to my home?"

"Our home," He corrected, and she refused to think about the meaning of those words. "Like all worlds, unfortunately requires a need for both Light and Dark in order to be stabilized for my plans. At least in the beginning," Ansem went on with a step forward. The trio stepped back. "Until I form a true Kingdom Hearts from my own making—from my own _taking,_ " He chuckled. "And I can redefine all of existence to my preference when everything falls into place."

"You didn't answer my question!"

Ansem scoffed. "You found yourself here though being sucked in through space, did you not?"

Sora didn't reply.

He went on, unabated. "The Realms of Light and Dark have such thin borders. One can almost find themselves falling in on the other side by accident," Ansem gave a wolfish grin, and she bit her tongue against the urge to shudder, and the taste of iron bloomed in her mouth. "The Key the boy helped me build gave me a blade with which to tear that curtain apart, even in just one spot. But it was enough."

Ansem turned to look at the Dark hole, still swallowing water and teeming at the edges with smoke-like trails.

"I told you how ill-fitting the name for this forsaken place was—'Destiny Islands'. If no stories were ever made here, what would be the point of such a name? After I abandoned this hovel, I didn't bother to think about it beyond momentary amusement over the coming years. Until not too long ago," His hand twitched at his side, as if recalling the weight of a Dark keyblade in his hand. "I learned of my own destiny. The great sunset that would come for us all, and how I would hasten us towards everlasting night. That I would be the hero."

"You're no hero!" Donald spat. He stomped forward, no doubt energized by his anger. "Heroes don't take people's Hearts, or use Darkness, or, or—" He shook his head so hard his hat nearly flew off his head. "Or be _anything_ like you!"

"Yeah," Sora piped up. "Heroes are supposed to have strong Hearts. They're supposed to be on the side of Light. You're a heartless, you don't have either of those things!"

Ansem gave a quick chuckle that soon boomed into a laugh. Behind him, the guardian heartless twitched. "And what about you? The child who bragged of having a weak Heart, who became a heartless herself? Who unwittingly _helped_ my plans by completing the keyhole?" Sora flinched at the reminder and accusation all in one. "Oh yes, I knew what you did immediately after Miss Kairi awoke. After the boy left, and the rest of the Princesses were waking up, there was a quick, precious moment where all the metaphorical stars aligned. Just for an instant, and yet it was enough. How do you think I came here?"

 _("When the keyhole formed that new pattern," Cinderella recalled, "Ansem became ensconced with Darkness and appeared to step into it. When he did, the archway went back to how it must have looked before it activated—I couldn't sense Ansem's Darkness afterward. He's gone far, far away from here, I'm sure.")_

 _("That was how I ended up there," Kairi smiled. "With you guys. Apprentice Xehanort's Hearts flashed for a second before he tossed me through that Dark portal, and Aqua's charm steered me the rest of the way.")_

Sora knew exactly how.

Ansem's laugh ebbed off into a spiteful jeer that laced his words. "I should be thanking you. You helped me open the path to my future seat of power. It would have been quite the task without my keyblade, but I suppose it was a necessary sacrifice to be able to return here. Good thing I had already planned ahead and used the keyblade while I had even half of it to summon the Door."

Her mouth went dry as sawdust at that. "Wait," She rasped, "What?"

 _("Until I form a true Kingdom Hearts from my own making—from my own_ taking _," He chuckled.)_

Oh, no. No, no, no, _no._

"Two keys," Ansem declared as he stepped closer. "Two Hearts. At the open and the close. But a third to use its power, and not merely to deal with the likes of children and animals," He cast a glance between the trio. "Rather, to use it to enact my will without risking anyone else having a chance at it. There can be only one of it in existence, after all, even if it is forged time and time again. Perhaps even with the countless Hearts that I shall have at my disposal soon enough, I'll use you, the boy," He smiled up at the heartless behind him, and even as sunny as it was on the shore there was not a speck of light in his eyes. "Every Heart I've come across in my journey to forge it. Thirteen Darknesses…wouldn't it be magnificent to use the ones that fight for the Light for the Key's Darker half?"

'The boy'. Ansem was going to use Riku.

Sora, without even thinking, raised her keyblade and shot a fire spell at him in the blink of an eye.

For something done in the spur of the moment, it was a remarkably powerful fire spell. She would have felt pleased with herself if she wasn't so angry right then.

Ansem, compared to earlier, turned back around slower this time and appeared almost bored at the intrusion. And as Sora launched fireball after fireball at him in the meanwhile, they now crumpled against a forcefield, completely ineffective.

Only when he faced her entirely did she dare cease, if only for worry that she would run out of magic like Donald.

As the last traces of the fireball left a singed smear down the front of the forcefield, Ansem regarded it with lukewarm interest. Sora continued to hold out her keyblade, ready at any moment, waiting for him to make the next move.

But he didn't. Ansem did nothing more than looking up from the last fading ember of her spell back to her. "Are you quite done yet?"

"Never," She replied simply.

Goofy readied his shield, and Donald raised his staff, though it no longer crackled with magic around the edges. "With what you're planning, you'll have to go through us first!"

"No," Ansem corrected with a wave of his hand, and Donald and Goofy were pushed several meters away in an instant. They uselessly pushed against another forcefield that had sprung up between them and Ansem. "I only have to go through her."

There would be no friends by her side for this fight. Sora couldn't quiet the slow onslaught of fear at that thought and felt herself go pale when Ansem turned back towards her. Behind him, the guardian heartless did not move an inch.

"Another spar," He proposed. Ansem's smugness was readily apparent with the line of his shoulders, the set to his jaw. The half-raise of his brow. Behind all of them, inside and outside the forcefield, the heartless storm continued to fight within itself, resisting and unresisting at once. Sora eyed them and their closeness to her friends. "This time, with magic."

For the fate of the worlds.

"'One on one,'" Sora echoed.

"'No sycophants allowed'," He echoed back, with not a glance towards Donald and Goofy. Sora scoffed.

"Really? Are you sure?" She jabbed her keyblade towards the guardian heartless still hovering behind him, and jabbed her thumb at the cloud of heartless that were inching closer towards Donald and Goofy in their festering. "If I'm not allowed them, then neither are you. Call off your heartless, Ansem. Fight fair."

Considering what Sora knew of Ansem and his character, or lack thereof, it was probably silly to bother asking him to fight fair. But thankfully he agreed.

"Very well," He snapped his fingers, and the heartless cloud immediately reorganized into a more obedient form, the few heartless she could see from this distance that were struggling quickly ceasing their resistance. She thought of the little heartless once more, and couldn't help but feel bad for them. But Sora knew she couldn't distract herself from that right now. "It is a better idea to let _them_ deal with it, in any case. But this one must stay with me."

Sora wasn't sure if by 'them' he was referring to Donald and Goofy, until she saw the heartless go back towards the Dark hole in a great black cloud once more and disappear. But his closing remark was certainly in regard to the guardian heartless that remained behind him, and she rolled her eyes.

"And what about that one?"

"He will not be a problem for you," He smoothly replied. The heartless gave a twitch.

"…Right," She deadpanned. Sora supposed she didn't have a choice now. He'd already called off the cloud of heartless, which had been the main concern. And the fact that he'd even bothered to call that off was all she'd be able to get out of someone like him, considering.

 _(Snow. Frost. Arctic.)_

She raised her keyblade, readying her next spell, and the duel began.

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _Day ?_

Now that they had confirmed the keyblade was not in the secret place itself, there was only one place left to look.

He looked to the door and slowly held his hand out.

 _("Very well then. Stand in front of it and stand proud." Riku complied._ _"Hold your hand out towards it, but don't try to reach for it physically. Reach for it with your Heart.")_

Riku flinched at the memory. That one moment had led to everything spiraling out of control, to him losing himself. But there was no other advice he had to go on now, on how to open this door and help Aqua and Mickey in their search.

" _When in doubt, don't listen to him. And it's a good rule of thumb to always doubt him."_

He couldn't afford to doubt that Ansem was right on the matter of using his Heart to access the islands' Heart. But, Riku thought, he could afford to doubt him on the notion of only Darkness being the solution to opening this door.

 _("Belief. Trust. These are tools you'll need to attain rewards your body can't grasp. Believe in the Dark, believe in power and freedom, and countless realms will be laid bare for you.")_

 _All the Dark had ever given him was the means to run away from everything but himself. To lash out at everything, including himself._

 _To lock himself away in a Realm where no Light reached._

 _But that wasn't true, wasn't it? Aqua and Mickey were here, and they, even as visibly tainted as Aqua appeared at the moment, were as Light as Light could be. And here they were, with him. Stuck in the Darkness._

 _Riku raised his hand, and this time, he believed in the Light. He believed in truth, and working together. Being together._

 _—_ _It was an exceedingly rare day that she agreed to take him to the park. So rare, that it was the only time Riku would ever recall her doing so. Riku saw that her silver hair fluttered in the breeze when he looked up at her, and his mother looked down at him in turn with a guilty look that flickered as she tried for a smile. —_

 _— "I win," Sora laughed at the end of the spar, her wooden toy sword having successfully knocked his own out of his hand. Kairi looked on, ever the referee, and behind the three of them laid the beginnings of the raft in the sand. "Yeah," He replied, and something in his Heart stirred at the sight of Sora's grin, the way she scrunched up her nose with laughter. How she rested her toy sword over her shoulder. "I guess you did. Rematch?" —_

 _—_ ' _You were my favorite.' Though his body was no longer technically his own in that moment, Riku could feel his Heart skip a beat. He didn't know he wanted to hear those words so badly. He didn't know he_ needed _to hear them. Was this what Light was supposed to feel like?_ _—_

 _"It's opening!" Mickey exclaimed, and Riku opened his eyes to the sight of the door creaking open. Its hinges gave a low metallic whine that echoed throughout the chamber._

 _The next instant, and the door opened wide enough for them to see beyond it. And there it was._

 _Golden, glowing, hovering just above the ground in the middle of a grand rocky chamber. Just like the part of the Realm of Darkness they walked into the remnant of Destiny Islands from._

 _The twin to Sora's keyblade._

 _The keyblade of the Realm of Darkness._

* * *

 **SORA**

 _Day ?_

The fight went on, and it quickly became impossible. The gulf of experience between the two was already unfathomably wide and she knew that she hadn't even begun to hit the limits of his ability yet. She hadn't even made him visibly strained.

Another frost spell. Another fire spell. Another dash of lightning. And Sora couldn't help but feel reactively annoyed at Donald and Merlin, then, for never teaching her anything more than the basics of magic. Maybe if she'd known a shield spell or how to do this forcefield or whatever it was Ansem dodged half of her spells with she could dismantle it. Maybe she could protect herself from his counters better. There were a lot of maybes that shot through her thoughts as fast as spells did.

But then, well, could Donald and Merlin have predicted a fight like this would happen? Could they have known the extent of Ansem's knowledge? The answers to either of those questions wouldn't come readily to her, and she supposed there had been no way of knowing. She and her friends didn't even know of Ansem's existence until very recently, much less his involvement in the worlds' current situation.

Yet beyond Donald and Merlin, Sora felt annoyed at herself. She was hardly an opponent for Ansem, despite the suggestions Donald was giving on the sideline for her magic, and as the last spell she could muster, a sputtering lightning spell that was more spark than fury, Sora collapsed into the sand. In her chest that gnawing hollow feeling grew overwhelming, and she knew she was out of magic.

She had lost.

Ansem chuckled again. "Are you done _now,_ child?"

Her annoyance bled into anger, and Sora balled her hands into fists.

Maybe, a small part of her wrought with doubt murmured, this confirmed everything she's ever thought about herself all along—that Sora was weak. That she was nothing more than a child playing around, no matter the worlds she'd saved, no matter the heartless she'd defeated. Because in the end it all came down to nothing.

"It is just as I told you, girl," Ansem went on, "Those who know nothing understand nothing."

Just for an instant, she thought _Maybe he's right._

And in the next instant Sora was angry at herself. For being weak. For not being enough. For getting this far, getting this _close,_ to saving everything only to be defeated at the finish line. Riku was supposed to have the keyblade in the beginning, Sora knew by now—if he hadn't fallen to the Dark, would he have been enough? Would he have saved the worlds?

And where would Sora have ended up in that scenario?

 _Maybe he's right._

But then a memory came unbidden to the front of her mind. How hers and Ansem's last duel had gone down. How Sora had gotten the keyblade back by trusting in it to know who its proper wielder was. By trusting in her friends to be there when it mattered. And by trusting in herself, as the Voice had told her she should before all of this began.

If she was trusting what Ansem said, would Sora be trusting herself at all? Clearly not.

Sora thought to that congregation in the library of Radiant Garden, after the fight with Xemnas and running back to the others. The Fairy Godmother's spell.

 _("Remember, my dear, when times are Dark and evil is near," Her wand flourished with every sentence, wreathed with Light. "No matter what, no matter when, you shall never, never be alone again. For with this charm beside you, and with your Light inside you, our strength will carry you home.")_

 _(My friends are my power.)_

"Well?" Ansem taunted. "Aren't you going to try calling upon those friends of yours? Or have you finally understood that Darkness will prevail over all?"

 _("But that Darkness…while it swallowed the Light, it didn't destroy it. It couldn't. All the Darkness managed to do was make that great Light sleep deep inside itself. But the thing is that within every Darkness is a door. And within this Darkness, waits a door to the Light. The true Light.")_

"…It will never prevail," Sora said to herself.

"Speak up."

She looked him in the eye. "You told me in our last fight that 'Darkness will prevail as the Light expires,' right?"

"I did," Ansem replied. Behind him, the guardian heartless twitched slightly, but otherwise did not stir.

Sora stood back up and brushed the sand off of herself. "See, there's one little problem with that: You're wrong. You're absolutely wrong. Because while the Heart can be weak, and sometimes it may even give in to its Darkness," Sora pulled out the thalassa shell charm from her pocket. "Deep down, there will always be a Light that never goes out."

 _(All the answers you will ever need are within you. All the power you will ever need is within you. Both merely sleep until you learn the means to beckon them forth._

 _("You hold much power in your grasp. It is time you learn to use it in its entirety.")_

— " _On one condition," Kairi held it just outside of her open palm and raised one finger. "For the charm to work, you gotta promise me you'll come back after whatever happens over there so we can all be together in the end. That means no more crazy ideas that are going to get you killed. —_

Sora had an idea. And, to what she was sure would be Kairi's relief when—not if—they would be together again, the idea was by no means crazy. And it would certainly not get her nor anyone else killed.

No. This was an idea that might just save them all.

"But you are right about one thing," She went on.

"Oh, really?"

Sora nodded. She looked between the keyblade and the charm, and said, "I _am_ going to try calling on my friends."

With those words, she threaded the loop of the charm through the metal semicircle on the hilt of her keyblade, right where the buckle of her keychain was attached. The thalassa shell charm and the keychain made a gentle _clack_ when they bounced together. Sora pulled the charm's loop all the way through the semicircle so that the end of it reached the tips of the charm, and finally she tucked the charm through the loop, so that it would hold fast to the keyblade on its own. She let go of the charm.

Her keyblade began to change.

It started with a glow, that brightened into a blue-white Light that was difficult to look at directly. As Sora tried to steal glances at its transformation between trying to blink away the spots in her eyes, she first saw its form lengthen, the shaft dividing in half, with the end having reformed itself from a single tooth with the shape of a crown in its gap into a multi-pronged star-like symbol wrought with meaning.

 _Light. Carry me home._

Without another thought Sora reached towards the handle, and for all its brilliance it was cool to the touch. Sora felt her Heart go weightless as every lingering doubt in her mind eased, and every wound on her body from the fighting before sewed themselves up. The gnawing hollowness of no more magic subsided.

Everything was blissfully clear.

The hilt reshaped itself into two matching wings around her hand and the original keychain she'd had since the very beginning disappeared, with only the thalassa shell charm remaining. And with one at the end of the keyblade right beside the teeth, and the other at the top of the hilt before the blade began, were two Hearts.

The glow dimmed to reveal a color palette of blue and white, with touches of yellow. Sora swiped it once to test its weight, and the keyblade gave a gentle _whish_ at the movement.

Ansem gave a short hum of appraisal. "Fairy magic, I see. Whose?"

Sora pointed the keyblade at him in challenge.

"No more questions," She said. "Time for round two."

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _Day ?_

"There!" Mickey ran towards the keyblade.

Riku and Aqua trailed behind as he grabbed onto its hilt, dismissing his own keyblade before doing so, and Riku noticed that the keyblade did not cease hovering in its spot even as Mickey held onto it and tried to pull it down for use.

"That's the one you were after?" Aqua asked, walking up. "A keyblade to the Realm of Darkness."

"It's the keyblade Yen Sid told me to look for," Mickey explained, and tried to pull on it again. He began to look somewhat concerned. "'The door of Darkness, tied by two keys. The door of Darkness, to seal the Light.'"

"Does that…mean we can also use that door to get out of this Realm?" Aqua inquired hopefully. "It's supposed to lead back out into the Realm of Light, isn't it?"

Mickey's ears bowed a little at that. "I, um, not quite," He said sadly. The keyblade still didn't budge. "The door that opened up between the two Realms, it won't let a Heart with Light pass through. So only Darkness keeps spilling out into the Realm of Light. Xehanort must have made it that way when he—I, um. Yeah."

"When I gave him my Heart and body," Riku gave a humorless chuckle. "It's okay, I'll say it. He must've used that special keyblade he made from the Hearts of the Princesses to open it up when he wouldn't let me see anything he was doing."

"We can lock the door by using the two keyblades, but we need help on both sides to get the door shut again," Mickey concluded.

"How are we going to do that with Sora gone?"

"She's not gone!" Mickey protested. He pulled again, this time similarly futile. "We will not give up hope! Sora's fine, I'm sure of it. There's just some interference from us being in different Realms!"

Neither Riku nor Aqua said anything to that, and Mickey continued to pull on it as hard as he could, his cartoonishly oversize shoes now scuffing on the ground with his efforts. Finally, he sagged. "It won't let go," He explained.

Riku remembered Ansem's words on Sora's keyblade and its twin being special. The feeling of it growing hotter in his grip as it found him unworthy. "Mickey," Riku tried, "I think you might need to convince it to let you wield it."

"I was about to suggest the same thing," Aqua said.

At this, Mickey paused and studied the two of them, before finally turning back towards the keyblade. "Alright," He replied as he closed his eyes and concentrated. "I think I know what to tell it. This might take me a few minutes."

Just then, a great rumble quaked under their feet and made them almost lose their footing. It was not quite so strong as what had preceded the turning of their shred of Destiny Islands outside the secret place with that awful reddened sky and Dark growths all around, but it was enough to set Riku on edge.

"I don't think you have a few minutes," He warned. Mickey didn't give any indication that he heard him.

The door they had walked in through slammed open. There was an all too familiar furious rustling, then, and the quiet chiming sound of Aqua summoning her keyblade without another word. Riku turned to see the cloud of heartless had made their way to them.

Mickey still continued to hold onto the keyblade with his eyes closed, but now his expression seemed less deep in concentration and more…hopeful?

Riku had already begun to summon Soul Eater back to his hand to help Aqua when Mickey called for him. He turned back around to see Mickey was now holding the keyblade in his hands properly, and it ceased to glow with a golden light.

It was the mirror image of Sora's keyblade—The exact same shape, but with the hilt and shaft having reversed colors, so that the hilt was silver and the shaft a gleaming gold. The keychain, comprised of three connected circles, was gold. Riku now figured out that the keychain itself was supposed to be shaped just like Mickey's head. Interesting. The only true difference from the Kingdom Key was that the small colored band just above the hilt for this keyblade was red, and not blue.

"—iku! Riku!" Mickey shouted for him again, and Riku looked back at him. Mickey's hopeful glee was readily apparent as he gave a small jump and his wiry tail flicked. He had been trying to tell him something.

"What was that?"

"Sora's alive!"

* * *

 **SORA**

 _Day ?_

She felt as though she could fight forever, with the keyblade's transformation.

Nothing Ansem did could hurt her for long. And no barrier he put up between them lingered forever. Spell after spell after spell shot out of the keyblade as fast as Sora could imagine them, never mind needing to say the spell itself aloud anymore, and it was no time before at all before Ansem was solely on the defensive. He grimaced as a fire spell broke his latest barrier, and the burst of embers spackled up and down his guardian heartless' arms as it was forced to block the worst of it seeping through.

As powerful as the magic she was using had to be, Sora didn't feel any drain from it at all. She launched a lightning spell larger than she had ever managed before, and a great sizzling scream of electricity launched out of the end of her new keyblade through the still-repairing hole in Ansem's forcefield. The guardian heartless raised its arms too slowly this time to block, having visibly resisted more and more over the course of the fight as Ansem struggled more to keep up the match and control it at the same time, and so it was Ansem who took the brunt of the magic.

He nearly stumbled to one knee as he clutched his exposed chest, where a vicious burn seeped out rivers of Dark smoke. Ansem sucked in a breath through his teeth.

It was surreal to see someone that looked so human bleed exactly the same as the heartless she fought. And Sora knew that it was because he _wasn't_ human, no matter how much he looked it, no matter how much he acted like it. But the sight still made it hard for her to be willing to fight him to the bitter end. Even though she had no choice.

Sora thought of Kairi, and all the other Princesses of Heart he'd harmed to get here. She thought of all the worlds that had been lost, including her home. And then she thought of Riku, his body and Heart stolen for Ansem's own selfish use.

As Ansem struggled to stand back up, Sora and the guardian heartless locked eyes.

They didn't say a word to one another, nor even a gesture. But somehow, Sora got the overwhelming feeling that she and the guardian heartless had reached an unspoken understanding. She raised her keyblade one last time.

Ansem whipped his head towards her as he stumbled back to his feet. He raised his hand to begin raising another forcefield, opening his mouth to say something, until two blackened, gnarled hands suddenly wrapped themselves around his throat.

The guardian heartless was choking him.

All Sora could do was watch, and Donald's and Goofy's matching gasps told her they were just as taken aback as she was. Until the guardian heartless, with his hands still around Ansem's throat, shot a look at her that all but yelled, _'NOW!'_

She raised her keyblade again, and this time one last fire spell roared out with hardly even a passing thought. Ansem cast off the heartless' grip and no doubt sought to raise another forcefield to shield himself, but by now it was too late. And with a crackling streak of flame, Ansem was done for.

The forcefield keeping out Donald and Goofy dissipated entirely, and even the Dark circle in the ground just beyond all of them seemed to shrink just slightly. Sora lowered her keyblade.

"Give it up, Ansem," She said. "Light won. Darkness lost."

Ansem was down on his knees in the sand, clutching madly at his chest as a near-ocean of Dark smoke billowed out, more than she'd ever seen from any heartless. He coughed again and again as Dark smoke trailed out from his mouth as well, and he threw the trio a furious glare.

"No," He wheezed, and coughed out a grunt before howling, " _NO!_ "

All on the play island went utterly still. The guardian heartless, still twitching to break free from Ansem's control again, ceased to move. The breeze did not stir. And the Dark circle seemed to grow Darker.

Ansem pounded his feet into the sand as he forced himself to stand upright, and he clutched both hands at his chest in a fruitless effort to stave the flow of Darkness from him.

"I'll show you," He vowed. "I'll show all of you the truth of Darkness!"

Ansem let one hand go from his chest to raise it into a fist in the air, and the guardian heartless gave one last jerk as the Dark circle grew to encompass the entire shore. The trio gathered as they nervously clutched onto one another, and Sora saw the keyblade start to glow slightly once more as the Dark circle was now the largest Dark portal she'd ever seen.

Finally, with the ground crumbling under their feet, the trio fell.

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _Day ?_

His first reaction was disbelief.

"There's no way," Riku reminded Mickey, who was bouncing from foot to foot. "I watched her disappear. I—I _felt_ her absence from Aqua's spell."

And he would never forget that horrible feeling as long as he lived. But Mickey was entirely unabated.

"I'm not sure how she did it, but she's okay!" He looked down at his new keyblade. "After I managed to get this keyblade to allow me to wield it, that was the first thing I learned. Though it didn't exactly tell me so, per se, uh," Mickey scratched his head. "I just knew she was alive and close by. I can't explain it. It must have something to do with her keyblade's and this keyblade's connection!"

Riku still couldn't quite believe it to be true. He had witnessed that horrible Dark keyblade go through her chest himself. The hollow coldness he'd felt from the spell still steeped his bones. Yet a small corner of his Heart that had refused to listen to reason grew hopeful at the possibility. _It makes sense,_ it whispered, _for the two keyblades to have a connection. Doesn't it?_

It did.

But before he could think on the matter further, the ground rumbled ominously once more, far stronger than the last. From her side of the room, Aqua yelled out a lightning spell that lit up the whole chamber and the heartless cloud broke apart. They both turned to see her blinking at the crumbling formation with surprise.

"I didn't think the spell was that strong," Aqua watched as the individual heartless quickly scurried off, Dark portals opening up all over the ground as they escaped before losing control over themselves again. "Where are they going?"

A few heartless outright bumped into the trio as they made their leave, and didn't so much as look up at them, their crooked antennae twitching nervously as the last of them exited the chamber.

Ansem was supposed to be controlling them, wasn't he? Well, okay, Riku had never gotten any confirmation of that, but knowing what he remembered from before his body and Heart were taken made him confident in the possibility. Maleficent had been able to control them for sure, at least. It made sense that Ansem could too.

But if the heartless cloud was broken apart, seemingly of its own volition—and the escaping heartless decided to completely ignore the three Hearts they could have tried to take, on top of not responding to the presence of two keyblades—and that felt like the most definitive proof so far that something had happened to Ansem. Albeit, it was nothing more than a gut feeling, but down here that was almost all they had to go on so far. That is, until Mickey confirmed Sora's revival with their keyblades' connection.

And Sora was the only person that wasn't currently with him that Riku could imagine defeating him.

He could feel his pulse pick up at that thought—Wait a minute.

Riku pressed a hand to his chest as Mickey and Aqua discussed the heartless' behavior. Another beat. And another. It had gotten stronger now with his excitement at his pulse returning, and stronger still at the implication of what it meant.

That Ansem was either gone, finally, or weakened enough for his body to begin to return to him.

Would his Heart come back with it? How would he know if it did?

The ground gave another rumble, louder than ever, and he was nearly thrown off his feet. As he and Aqua were stumbling to regain their footing, Mickey pointed beyond towards the far end of the room.

"Look!"

Dark mist had enrobed the entirety of that part of the chamber, and it began to dissipate. Black curls of the mist still clung onto the edges of an enormous white door as it revealed itself, carefully decorated and inlaid with small windows of stained glass on either side and at the top of its crest. It was wide open. And, Riku saw now, it was the exact same door that had appeared on the stained-glass platform from his dream back in Hollow Bastion.

Why was that appearing now, of all times?

"That's it, that's the door Yen Sid told me to find!" Mickey gasped. "Wait, if it was in the same spot as where this keyblade sat, did Ansem open it up here on purpose?"

"I'll bet he did," Riku replied. "And I bet he was trying to hide it, too, and throw us off the trail with the heartless."

Riku paused. He had an inkling of an idea that he couldn't even begin to explain.

"Sora's there, isn't she?"

Mickey spared a glance down at his keyblade. "She's gotta be real close by, now, but Riku—Wait!"

He didn't listen. And he was far from caring. All Riku had thought before he took off was _Sora's here she's here and she's alive and SHE'S OKAY oh I messed up I gotta say sorry I really messed up—_

Riku was halfway to the door when a vast gnarled foot landed in his way. Without bothering to look up, he summoned Soul Eater.

That is, until Aqua threw a stray spark at him. "Don't you dare even think about it!"

"But what about the heartless?" He called back. The heartless stepped over him as they made their way towards the back of the chamber where Aqua and Mickey had begun their fight once more, and Riku turned away from a Light, overwhelming glow undoubtedly from one of their spells to lure them away from the door.

"Leave it to us, Riku!" Mickey replied. "Sora's gonna need your help closing the door, even with Donald and Goofy!"

He thought back to seeing them fight for the first time. How their mastery over fighting heartless was beyond anything he'd ever seen. _Right. Can't lose myself and everything now that we're so close._

Riku dismissed Soul Eater from his hand, and took off for the door.

Towards Sora.

* * *

 **SORA**

 _Day ?_

They fell, and they fell, and they fell.

Sora felt herself collide with a surface that felt like sand, but they couldn't still be on the island. There was no way.

A second later, and she realized she was right; the three of them landed on some sort of a long grey path that hovered in the middle of an abyss, bent and winding. Dark mist cleared from the end of their path to reveal a vast white door, almost absurdly oversized, with stained-glass panes on both sides and along the top. It was open, and seeped out more Dark mist to match its coverings.

Was even this place still located in the Realm of Light? Where had they landed?

"That's gotta be the source of all that Darkness Kairi and the other Princesses were sensing," Goofy said. He held tightly onto his shield.

He was right, Sora realized. There was no other possibility.

Donald replied, "What are we going to do?"

"I'll tell you what you can do," A voice from above replied. It was Ansem, hovering in midair, still billowing Dark smoke but now with a near-crazed grin on his face. Behind him, the guardian heartless did not move. "Submit! The truth of Darkness is that it is eternal; You can't run from it! You can't hide from it! All you can do is embrace it!"

 _("Until I form a true Kingdom Hearts from my own making—from my own_ taking _,")_

Ansem turned to face the door, and held out his hand.

"KINGDOM HEARTS!" He cried, the Dark smoke parting past his outstretched arm like the dividing of a great tide. "Remake me! Fill me with the power of Darkness!"

The door, which had already been ajar for what could only be quite some time, opened more and more yet. The small trickle of Dark mist widened into a stream, and then a river. And then threatened to become an ocean. Ansem laughed.

Sora could feel herself and her friends begin to panic. She could hardly imagine the effect this would have on the worlds, and their Hearts. Was this making for more heartless amongst the worlds Sora and her friends hadn't managed to lock the keyholes to? What about their people? What could Kairi and the other Princesses of Heart possibly be sensing from this right now?

Kairi. That was it—Her story.

 _("But that Darkness wasn't perfect. Even in the worst parts of it there were still fragments of Light in the Hearts of kids like you and me. And those kids managed to find a way to rebuild a facsimile of that first great Light that was swallowed by that Darkness by piecing together those small fragments into something greater. By working together.")_

By working together.

Sora looked down at the keyblade in her hand, still transformed, and wrapped her other hand around the charm.

 _("There is a Light that never goes out.")_

"A Heart without Light is no Heart at all, Ansem," She spoke up as she called forth all the magic she could. There was no spell in her mind, nothing on the tip of her tongue. Just the memory of Light and the knowledge that her friends were with her in that moment, even if they were worlds and worlds away amongst the stars. She turned to Donald and Goofy, and they gave a nod, placing their hands over her own wrapped around the hilt. The keyblade glowed brighter. "Even Kingdom Hearts!"

The Light from the keyblade was enough to overtake the void, until Sora realized it wasn't just the keyblade that was glowing. It was the opened door.

The Darkness pouring from it had turned to Light.

"Light…?" Ansem's bravado was entirely gone with the onslaught of Light, and he seemed to wither beneath its glow. The Darkness poured out of him, more and more, until both he and his guardian heartless had become nothing more than the billowing folds of the Dark that seeped from his open wounds.

He gave a shuddering squelching sound, the first death rattle Sora had ever heard, and past the blinding Light from the keyblade and the door she could see the ocean of Darkness that formed both him and the heartless was now sinking to the grey sandy path. Shrinking. Shriveling.

Dying.

Ansem was gone for good.

And, Sora noticed, her keyblade's transformation as well. The Light from both the open door and the keyblade was dimming, and she saw the latter returning to its original form. On the end of the hilt swayed the still tied thalassa shell charm, making a gentle _clack_ sound against the keychain.

"The door!" Donald's feet slapped against the ground as he raced towards the end of the path, and Goofy and Sora were close behind. She pressed herself up against the enormous side of one door as they clustered around the other, and pushed.

And pushed. And pushed. Her side of the door barely budged. "Come on," She gritted out, trying instead to push her back up against it and dig her heels into the ground. It still didn't work.

Donald and Goofy didn't seem to have much luck either with their side, and Goofy eventually stopped pushing and instead peeked inside the door with one ear raised at attention. Before he jerked away suddenly.

"Woah!"

Donald huffed, "Stop staring and keep pushing!" But, unable to take his own advice, he angled over to look as well. "Huh?!"

"What's going on?" Sora turned to see a crowd of heartless was beginning to form beyond the door on the other side, into a strange rocky chamber filled with Dark mist and glowing rocks. They were all just as large as the heartless that had formed on the play island before Destiny Islands fell, and they were all looking towards the trio and the open door.

"Hurry!" Donald ordered, and he and Goofy were now pushing as hard as they could, but it only managed to move a few centimeters more.

Sora pushed onto the door with everything she could: Digging her heels into the ground and locking her knees, grinding her shoulder into the surface of the door, but it hardly budged a millimeter. It wasn't long before she slid down the side of the door and into the sand in defeat.

She was ready to cry. They'd gotten this far, defeated Maleficent, defeated _Ansem,_ and had come so close to saving the worlds if it weren't for this ridiculously huge door that refused to move. Sora could feel a lump form in her throat. "I-I can't—"

"Don't give up!"

Riku. She had been wanting to hear that voice for so long now that she almost didn't believe it when she finally heard it again.

"Riku? Is," Her voice caught in her throat, and Sora blinked repeatedly. The sight of Ansem wearing Riku's skin was still so fresh in her mind. She stood up to look. "Is that really you this time?"

Her breath caught along with her voice when she saw him. Riku looked as perfect in person in that moment as he did in her dreams, if a little ruffled, and after the endless fear and not knowing whether he was okay, if he could ever be okay again, Sora sagged against the door with relief.

"Yeah, Sora," His voice was normal now, if strained with worry. "I-It's really me this time."

He looked at her like he thought he'd never see her again. Like he was trying to memorize every detail of this moment. Sora knew she was doing the same. Riku's eyes were green again. _His eyes were green again._ He wasn't talking like a horror movie anymore. There was no more sickly pallor to his skin, or bags under his _green green so green_ eyes like there had been in Hollow Bastion.

Riku was okay. He was truly okay. And that made her feel as though maybe there was now a chance everything else would be okay, too. Because they were together again at last.

 _(United, they could handle anything. Nobody and nothing could defeat them. And that was a fact of life, like how the sky is blue, grass is green, and Sora and Riku were unbeatable when they were_ together _.)_

Sora wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to laugh and leap and squish his face like crazy just like she had back in Traverse Town. But instead, Sora settled for a hug.

That is, until she walked face first right into some invisible barrier between his side of the door and hers. Sora rubbed her nose at the less-than-graceful result. Riku gave a wet chuckle. He was beginning to cry.

"I—Wha—Oh, _crap,_ " Riku's words from Hollow Bastion came to mind and Sora straightened. "I-I'm sorry, crap, dam—" She nearly cursed until she remembered Donald was right there.

Riku shook his head and wiped at his face. He chuckled again. "No, no, it's not because of you—technically it is,but—oh, I need to shut up already—" His words came out in a tumble. "It's just that I wanted to do exactly the same thing you did. But we can't. I'm so sorry."

"Why?"

He gnawed at his lip, and Sora could see small pinpricks of blood bead where his teeth bit too hard. "Something about the fact that the Light in our Hearts won't let us cross. I don't know very well. All I know for sure is that it's stupid and dumb and probably because of something Ansem did—Shit, _Ansem!_ " His eyes widened. "You managed to defeat him! And Maleficent!"

"We sure did," Sora grinned.

"No cursing," Donald scolded. A tumbling sound from beyond the door made them all jump, and he added, "And we need to get a move on!"

"Right, right, sorry," Riku stammered, and he looked between them. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so sorry. To all of you. I-I shouldn't have said any of that awful stuff I did, and I shouldn't have called either of you guys that stuff, I was being a jerk. A total jerk," He was nearly rambling now. He turned back to her. "And I was a giant stupid jerk for going with Maleficent and Ansem and anything either of those—I don't even have a word to describe them that doesn't use cursing—anything either of them said. I was being a complete creep and I just wanted to destroy everything because I was stupid and mad and crap I am so, so sorry—"

"It's okay!" Sora interjected. "Everything's okay! I forgive you! It all worked out!"

" _We_ don't necessarily forgive you," Donald chided, until Goofy nudged him in the arm.

"Yes, we do, Donald."

Donald shot Goofy a scalding glance.

"It only worked out because you _died,_ Sora!" Riku looked behind him as another rumbling noise rang out. He looked back to her with the rawest expression of desperate regret and sadness she'd ever seen Riku make. "I don't know how you came back, I can't even begin to come up with a good enough apology for that. B-But it was all because of me, and—and now I'm not even entirely sure we'll see each other ever again after this—"

Wait, what?

"What did you say?"

"Once the door closes, I think we'll be stuck here. In the Realm of Darkness. And you'll be in the Realm of Light."

"…No, I, just, no," Sora could barely get the words out. This was worse than anything. All she'd wanted was to be together again with her friends after all of this was over, and now it would be impossible? "I—Please, no."

Sora had started to grasp at the necklace without thinking, a new nervous habit of hers, and his eyes landed on it. Riku stood a little straighter at that.

"That's it," He reached, as if to grab hold of her hand, until his fingertips reached the barrier. "The necklace. It'll be just like when we were kids, Sora. Every time you look at it, you'll think of me. And now every time I think about it, since I won't be able to see it in person, I'll think of you. It can connect us."

"And Aqua's promise," Riku reminded her. He winced. "Well, okay, that one didn't work out exactly, did it? But wandering around down here definitely counts as a Dark path, right? You can stay with me in my thoughts. Maybe you can even guide me back that way, and we can be together like that."

But none of those sounded like they'd do any good. Just having someone in your thoughts and not being able to see them in person wasn't enough. Sora had had the entire past month or so to know personally that that wasn't enough.

At her lack of response, Riku winced again. "We'll see each other again. I promise. I…I messed up. I messed up bad. And I nearly destroyed everything because of it. But that means I need to go," He wiped his face. "To fix what I can, and to fix myself. Just think of this as me repaying you the favor for the last month, okay?"

Sora wanted to say a lot of things at that moment. Things like _You don't need to repay me, I'm just trying to do the right thing._ Like _Riku, you're about to lock yourself in the Darkness for maybe forever, don't you realize that won't fix you?_

And a Dark, selfish place in her wanted to say _Riku, Riku, come out from behind that door somehow and let's run away. If doing the right thing means we might never see each other again, then forget it. Forget the Light and the Darkness, every star we see in the sky is a world we could make a life for ourselves in, even if everything is rotting and crumbling at least I'd still know you're okay._

And somewhere deeper, a secret even to herself, wanted to only say _(I love you)._

But she didn't say any of those things.

She only whispered thickly, her throat constricting with fear and grief and things too heavy for a child to bear, "Do you…do you really promise that? That I'll see you again?"

"I promise."

She hesitated and glanced down for a moment at the stony earth below their feet. At the edges of the Door to Darkness they'd need to close very soon. A small sad laugh escaped her throat at how desperate this situation was.

"Riku?" She asked. He was already watching her intently, but now his brows raised slightly.

"Hm?"

Sora wasn't sure how to say this. Perhaps it was best to keep it simple and clean. Unhindered by overthinking and oversaying.

"You're still my favorite," She finally said. "You always were."

The remaining tension in every inch of him melted to nothing, and Riku gave her the softest look she'd ever seen from him. But before he could do anything Riku seemed to remember the situation they were in. That the worlds were in. His hands went back towards the door, and Sora could see his throat bobbing against something he wasn't sure how to say.

Donald leaned over. "Did you say, 'we'll' be stuck in the Realm of Darkness?"

"Oh, um," Riku cleared his throat and looked behind him at the ongoing fight, which seemed to be ebbing off somewhat now. "Yeah, there's a few of us here. I've been walking through this place with Aqua and Mickey, they found me."

"Wait, Aqua?"

"THE KING?!"

Donald and Goofy's outburst shocked Sora from her gloom, and she saw that they both gaped at Riku's words before angling around like crazy to see behind him.

"Where is he? Tell me!" Donald demanded. Riku hurriedly tried to get out of the way before a silhouette framed by a burst of Light appeared not far behind him, caught between two enormous heartless that were breaking apart into Dark smoke.

And that's when a high-pitched voice called out, "Hey, fellas! I'm glad to see ya!"

It was a mouse. A cartoonish mouse she could barely see by his silhouette, but she readily recognized the shape of his head: It was the exact same shape as the keychain to her keyblade. Two smaller circles connected onto the larger circle.

He drew out a keyblade and raised it up high, and Sora saw that it was an exact duplicate of her own keyblade, right down to the crown in the negative space of the tooth.

"Your majesty!" Donald and Goofy cried simultaneously, scrambling to get themselves to attention and salute, before Mickey waved his hands.

"Don't worry! I'll see you again soon!"

Weren't they about to get locked in there forever? "But—" She was about to ask, but then Mickey turned to her.

"Don't worry, Sora. There will always be a door to the Light."

Donald and Goofy nodded. "It's alright, Sora," Goofy assured her, "You can always trust King Mickey!"

There were few people she trusted more than Donald and Goofy, and so she believed them.

That, and Riku had made a promise that they would see each other again. And Sora refused to allow herself to think it would ever be otherwise: She, Riku, Kairi, Cid and Leon and Aerith and Yuffie…they would all see each other again. Somehow, someway.

The thalassa shell charm gave another small _clack_ against the keychain, and Sora understood. This was just a detour. That's all. They would be together again soon.

"Now," Mickey said, "Let's close this door for good!"

Sora nodded, and blinking the rest of the tears away, she threw her weight against the door, Donald and Goofy helping from either side of her. She heard Riku give a pained grunt as he pulled with everything he had as the ground rumbled once more.

"Donald, Goofy," Mickey said, "Thank you."

And finally, she could feel the heaviness of the door start to give. Digging her shoes into the ground for leverage, she pushed at the door with a newfound burst of strength, a second wind that helped her forget her fatigue from the fight, and before she knew it the latch of the door clicked with a sense of finality.

Sora leapt away from the door and raised her keyblade, and stars of Light gathered at the tip before a great beam shot out towards the door with a trilling chime. On the other side of the door, in the Realm of Darkness with Riku and Aqua, she imagined Mickey's keyblade doing the exact same.

Not a moment longer, and the door was locked with a final _click._

The door gave one more chiming sound as it started to dissipate into Light, and with one last gleam it disappeared into the void, twinkles of Light falling away into the void like shooting stars.

Far from the first time, and far from the last, Sora thought of hers, Kairi's, and Riku's days on the islands. Before any of this ever happened.

Back then, the biggest thing she had to worry about was figuring out how to pry the resident seagull of the play island from her egg. And how to wash the resultant bird droppings out of her clothes. Sora gave a sniffling laugh at that. Would the seagull still be there as the islands came back? Or their raft, still packed and ready to go, waiting for a journey that now would never come?

Would her mom wake up in their house alone and wonder where her daughter went? Sora winced at the thought. Would Kairi return to Destiny Islands, or would she stay in Hollow Bastion? And if it was the latter, would her parents wonder where she went? What about Riku's mom? Tidus, Selphie, Wakka, Zell, Irvine…Sora wondered how long she'd be down here. How long Riku would be stuck in the Realm of Darkness. Would all their friends go back to school and wonder why they didn't return to class with them?

She glanced at Donald and Goofy, and saw that Jiminy had poked his head out of Goofy's pocket now as well to watch the door disappear. Would Jiminy wake up in Prankster's Paradise when it was remade? Would he be together again with Pinocchio and Geppetto? What about Donald and Goofy, would Daisy and Max be waiting for them? Would Queen Minnie ever see King Mickey again?

" _There will always be a door to the Light."_

All would be right. Sora trusted in that fact. It took time to save the worlds, and so it would take time to return to their own.

To return home.

With that thought, she turned to her friends. And without a word, they continued to walk down the path that extended beyond where the door had been.

Back to the King. Back to Aqua, and Kairi, and all of her friends.

Back to Riku.

And back to the Light.

* * *

 **NOTES:**

THIS IS IT, YOU GUYS. There will be an epilogue very shortly, it's already written, but I just need to finish the illustration for it (every KH game has an endscreen, after all ) Onto the notes!

1\. REFERENCES! REFERENCES EVERYWHERE! Homestuck, The Sims, The Little Prince, and more!

2\. Current tally of people that realize Sora and Riku have feelings for each other: 6

3\. Alternate chapter title—In Which I Use Six Commas in One Sentence

4\. Since this fic is supposed to conform to a PG-13 rating (or I like to think it does, anyway), this means I only get to drop an F-bomb once per installment. So, just like Nomura only being allowed to have Mickey Mouse appear once in KH1, I had to make it count. I thought it would be fitting that our precious resident trashmouth Cid got the first honor!

5\. SERIOUSLY NOMURA THERE WAS NO GOOD REASON AS TO WHY KAIRI COULDN'T HAVE EVEN ACCOMPANIED LEON, AERITH, AND YUFFIE BACK TO HOLLOW BASTION AT THE END WHEN YOU RETURN TO SEAL THE KEYHOLE—IT WAS HER HOME! AND DON'T USE "SHE DOESN'T FIGHT" AS AN EXCUSE, AERITH DOESN'T FIGHT EITHER! SHE COULD HAVE LOOKED THROUGH THE LIBRARY WHERE THE FLASHBACK HAPPENS AND SAID SOMETHING ABOUT HER GRANDMA DAMN IT.

6\. One of the better storytelling pieces of KH1 in particular is the slow progression of what you know about Ansem over the course of finding the Ansem Reports. In the very beginning, you get the sense of this wise and just king who is trying to find a solution to a horrible foe of his people. And then, as you find more Ansem Reports, you see his progression of investigation and small discoveries of stuff like gummi blocks. It's only at the end level in HB that you get the rest of the reports from Aerith and find out "Holy shit! King Ansem was the bad guy!" and you don't really know Ansem SoD isn't King Ansem until KH2.

7\. I dunno if any of you guys had it happen to you in-game for Terra's campaign, but in BBS in the boss fight against OG Xehanort, Xehanort legitimately _throttles you._ I'm not kidding, it freaked the shit out of me on one play-through (the only time it happened, interestingly). It never happened to me before! Apparently it's a super rare thing if you get too close? Anyway, since it's technically canon that Xehanort has choked Terra before, and in this story Terra's been more or less tortured by Ansem SoD all these years? Terra's desperate to repay the favor. Especially after seeing Ansem SoD manage to get Riku, too.

8\. You might have noticed that teeny hint (though I will admit it was probably too subtle) that it was Terra who made the wayfinder charms in this chapter, and not Aqua like in canon. I just feel like we're not given as many hints that Aqua is the craftsy/artistically inclined sort of person like Terra is with his wood carvings (instead, the BBS novel states that she likes to bake) (so definitely expect some quality time w/ Remy and Aqua when KH3 comes up), so it'd make more sense for Terra to have been the one to make the wayfinders (and obviously I am tentatively changing a buuunch of the sequence of events and how the plot's gonna roll in BBS)

9\. Okay, so Roxas can't bite into ice cream because Sora can't bite into ice cream, with the whole sharing a body and all. I know this isn't canon-compliant, because in the first scene of Days where Roxas and Axel are on the clock tower together before he agrees to join Org13 it shows Roxas happily biting into the ice cream, w/ Axel trying the same (and flinching at the cold) (or maybe the ice cream still tastes salty to Axel then?) Anyways, I had to reverse it since Axel and Kairi are related in this fic, and Kairi totally can bite into ice cream and Sora cannot. I didn't plan ahead properly :( This is completely irrelevant information that will probably never come into any importance whatsoever, but I guess that's how I roll ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

10\. And I know canonically Roxas doesn't give responses to anything in the very beginning of Days for around a week, but that's boring to write a one-sided conversation. So I'm making it so that he alternates between parroting things and giving no response at all to help find an equilibrium to write easier.

11\. A couple of you wanted the whole sora's-left-alone-in-HB ordeal to have been handled with a little more gravity, and don't worry! I am totally in agreement! It's just that Sora isn't the type to be salty/guilt trip-y about…well, much of anything, really. It seems OOC. However, it would be absolutely in-character for someone like Cid to express some concerns about that, which he totally did both on- and off-screen, as you later saw with Donald. (◉◡◉✿)

12\. Yes, indeed, that _was_ a sneak reference to the Nibelheim Incident. I _am_ going to (sort of) adapt the events of FF7 and a couple other games into this fic series over time...though a lot of it will happen off-screen. Sorry! There's just way too much to talk about here in the first place! But I will make sure the appropriate moments happen on-screen. And I will make it work with how Radiant Garden fell. Somehow. I still need to figure out the other half of it. But Barret, Marlene, Elmyra, etc FF7 characters may or may not appear? I'll try my best (๑•́ω•̀๑)

13\. Leon's not actually mad at Cid and they both know it (well, okay, he sort of is but it's primarily unfair to blame Cid and Leon knows it), he's just got a lot of old pent-up anger and resentment from what happened in the fall and their leaving RG.

14\. Why didn't Jiminy go back to his original world after KH1? Did Mickey give him a teeny gummi ship to return to Disney Castle with after he was in the sleeping Prankster's Paradise in DDD so that he could partake in KH3? I mean, I'm keeping him through CoM/Days/KH2 for the sake of the journal being a plot point (S I G H), but he's gotta go back home eventually. He's gotta resume his duties as a conscience! Also, this chapter was a few days later than it would have been because my dumb ass forgot jiminy and you can all blame me for it. Bring on the rotten tomatoes and booing :(

15\. Another thing I can't understand from the games—After a certain point there'd be no need for Ansem SoD to continue donning the King Ansem identity. There wouldn't be much of any point. Was he just doing it out of some grudge against King Ansem to sully his name? IDK. So I'm gonna try to come up with some sort of explanation for that eventually.

16\. You probably already noticed from the little hints throughout, but I'll come right out and confess-Honestly, even as a SoRiku shipper to the death, I'll be the first to admit it isn't the healthiest dynamic in canon—If they had gotten together in KH1, Riku would have been downright abusive (likely in the more conventionally abusive sense). If they had gotten together in KH2 they still would have been bordering on septic (With Riku being far less of the physically abusive flavor he would have been in KH1, but still having overtones of the emotional abuse flavor—he would have been doing all of the 'taking' in the relationship, with Sora doing all of the 'giving'. It would not have been a healthy dynamic, and more akin to a one-way street.)(They don't seem to be remotely healthy for one another until effing DDD!) ಥ_ಥ Alas, as a SoRiku shipper, I must find a way to reconcile my ships with modern sensibilities. And so these fics will partially center on my finding a way to make this relationship work in the (very) long run, and getting these two dweebs together in such a context as to make them both be healthy for one another. I like my pairings kosher!

17\. In reference to when Aqua meets Sora and Riku in BBS, that whole scene is ridiculously awkward in-game. Like, from the kids' perspective, here's this weird-ass lady just dropping down from the crazy high pier like a jungle cat or something and giving awkwardly long pauses and talking in total non-sequitur statements (half of the dialogue in that scene is mental voice-overs) and you can tell sora and riku both are a little like "weird? okay I guess" before just rolling w/ it and I feel like that describes the entirety of BBS

18\. Mickey really is shit at consoling people on matters of genuine stress, and you see it a bit in 2.8 (not sure about other games). Kairi expressing distaste at the idea of training with Lea, her former kidnapper? Oh, no, don't worry, he's totally different now. Aqua expressing depressive thoughts about how she wasn't sure how much longer she could take being in the RoD? You'll be fine! Everything's going to be okay! Like…I can see how Queen Minnie might find it to be a quality she loves in him, but it can definitely be a double-edged sword.

 **On The Fairy Godmother and Oathkeeper**

Canon is interesting in that it doesn't ever seem to acknowledge the Kingdom Key's ability to transform. (And even the KKD's capability to do so isn't acknowledged at all until KH3, in which it seems that Mickey's keyblade becomes a weird cross between the KKD and Star Seeker? I can't remember if they ever mention whether it's a transformation or a whole new keyblade. All I remember is that it's very lame and that I will not do the same thing in this fic.) Anyways, it's never even mentioned in the novels or anything. I know it's technically just a fun little gameplay mechanic, but it'd be cool if it came into story relevance a bit. Especially since the whole "keyblades can't be broken from damn near anything until Riku breaks his _VERY SYMBOLIC KEYBLADE_ from a simple bossfight that doesn't have any story significance so he can get a beep beep car key" ordeal was lame as hell.

Soooo...I took it into story relevance here! Even if only temporarily.

Oathkeeper is a super cool keyblade with a lot of symbolic importance, and I wanted to do it justice at some point in the fics. That, combined with how The Fairy Godmother never actually goes to Hollow Bastion as well in-game. It's actually very weird that The Fairy Godmother (henceforth referred to as TFG) never actually bothers going with you to check up on Cinderella-They've been separated for over a decade! She would have no idea where Cinderella went after BBS! It's crazy! But adding in TFG helped me fill in a lot of the game's plot holes as well. For instance: Leon and Co. tell you in Traverse Town that they had no idea what would happen after Ansem was defeated. And then, five minutes later in-game, they spontaneously know what happens after you seal the keyhole? One could argue they read something about it in the library where you see them next, but they never say for sure. And there's the factor that there'd be no logical reason for (King or Dark Seeker) Ansem to be able to know either and write it down, and the latter wouldn't have any incentive to write down what would happen either. So I had to fix that.

Enter TFG: A fairy is old as dirt and would plausibly know what would happen. TFG in particular also know that Sora would be facing some serious odds going up against Ansem, no matter what Sora would be willing to admit. And TFG would be the only fairy still in the cast at the time that would be both able and willing to help even the odds-Because while in canon in the fight against Ansem SoD you shouldn't bother with magic because it does literally nothing to Ansem, beyond Sora tossing her keyblade like a frisbee at him and Goofy doing the same with his shield, I can't come up with any other logical and feasible means for Sora to be able to effectively fight him; Strength is out, because Ansem just hovers around the whole time and none of them can really reach him (and it'd be a 14 year old girl against a grown-ass adult, making the logistics outside of super strength not really work). So that mostly only leaves magic, which is technically skewed in Ansem's favor because he's obviously master-level at magic in canon, being an aspect of Xehanort. (and because I already wrote him until this point as being a master of magic to be able to go toe to toe with Maleficent).

But Sora only knows basic spells so far, even as fast with spellslinging as we saw she can be, so how would she be able to feasibly compete? Hmm. Well...

…You might be able to see why she needed a bit of help to keep her oath. *Ba-dum tsssh!*

(And yes, if you're _super_ observant, this absolutely means that if Riku had stuck with Maleficent in the fic, he would have in turn received Oblivion from her tainting the necklace with her magic to make the keychain once he took the Kingdom Key and the necklace from Sora. I might still find a way to work in Oblivion sometime in the fics, I'm not even remotely sure how if so, but this is indeed how Oblivion would have come about.)

 **On Kairi Learning How to Fight**

The primary reason is- _Because I have that "Awesome Kairi" tag there on AO3 for a damn reason!_ KH3 was just the cherry on top of a shit sundae for the poor girl. I'm not gonna go into it, because I don't want to have to link another essay, but you all saw. You. All. Saw. And the worst part is, it doesn't make any sense! People are going to go after her and everyone in the cast knows it! Don't you think they'd at least spare some time to show her the basics of how to defend herself? Wouldn't they make sure to get even some practice in for her? It's just dumb. It's all very needlessly dumb solely for the sake of upholding traditionalist gender roles and Nomura's own perceptions of what a Love Interest™ should do to remain a prim and proper lady, even at the expense of her characterization in KH1.

That one part in-game, where Sora's telling Kairi that she has to stay behind when he goes to fight against Ansem Seeker of Darkness, he tells her "You're just going to get in my way," which...uh, rude? And crazier still is that Kairi just laughs and rolls with it! I feel like Kairi would put up at least some sort of a fight according to her spunky characterization in the like 15 minutes of character development she gets in the very beginning of the game. Which is about all the character development she gets in the entire series ._. (Though I will say that KH3 had her show up and talk for even five minutes, which was one of the few good parts about that game) I mean, even her spinoff characters Namine and Xion got better character development! What the heck! So really, I think that conversation would go slightly different if they stayed consistent with her character development, like:

S: I mean...You'd kinda just get in my way.

K: The only thing getting in the way in a fight with him would be his face getting in the way of my fists! (ง'̀-'́)ง

(kidding, of course, she doesn't seem that fiery, but you get the idea)

Plus, as a former resident of Radiant Garden, she'd want to go along and see her home. That was the whole point of the raft in the first place, right? It would make sense. And seeing that particular Ansem Report mentioning her would have been a very interesting moment in-game. Ugh. This is giving me a headache. Anyways, I decided to deal with that here. Hopefully you liked it!

* * *

Thank you all again for making it this far in the fic! ٩(๑❛ᴗ❛๑)۶ You guys are the stars in my night sky. I'll save the rest of my crying for the next chapter.


	14. Epilogue: A Small Yellow Star

**There is not one, but two illustrations with this chapter! (though technically it's one illustration arranged into an endgame battle report screen, like any usual KH game would have!) Hop on over to Ao3 to see it! (you can find it by just searching for this fic under the exact same name, all of the other illustrations are there as well at the bottom of their respective chapters)**

 **We're here! At the finish line! The fic is officially complete!**

* * *

 **KAIRI**

 _Day Fifteen_

When Kairi first saw the shooting stars, she felt like her Heart had fallen through the pavement.

Shooting stars meant a world had fallen, hadn't they? And if a world had fallen, that meant Sora and her friends had lost the fight. That they were gone, and the worlds doomed.

That is, until Kairi saw that the stars were shooting _up._ Back into the sky where they belonged.

She had been staying up the past few nights later than usual, staving off slumber until her eyes burned and the first slivers of dawn peeked on the horizon, searching and waiting for any sign that Sora had won. And finally, she'd gotten it.

Kairi stumbled to her feet breathlessly, any and all exhaustion forgotten as she raced to go wake up the others and get them to come watch the return of fallen worlds. The return of Light to them all. And as she ran, Kairi wondered: Would she wake up back on Destiny Islands? Or would she remain here on Radiant Garden, her first home? Would any of her family return to her?

But she had been too hasty leaving to see the first of Radiant Garden's former occupants already beginning to return—For a young man with jagged spikes of blond hair appeared with a flash of Light on the cracked pavement of the castle courtyard Kairi had vacated, and he hoisted his buster sword back over his shoulder with no small amount of confusion as he found himself back home for the first time in ten years.

* * *

 **RIKU**

 _Day ?_

The door was finally closed. Riku leaned heavily against a nearby rock to catch his breath—it had been far more effort than he'd realized to shut it. But however worn out he was, it did nothing to abate the wild grin on his face.

Sora really was alive. And Ansem wasn't. Maleficent wasn't. The worlds were safe now, and she was okay.

And somehow, even after everything he'd done, he was still her favorite.

That was perhaps the biggest surprise of all to Riku. How could Sora say that? How, after breaking the promise, after insulting her friends, kidnapping people, tainting worlds' Hearts with Darkness, nearly causing the apocalypse—and that was just the tip of a vast iceberg. The grin slid off the more he thought about it.

He would fix this. Riku knew he would, even if he wasn't sure how. Starting, he thought as he turned towards Aqua and Mickey, with the two that in such a short time came to mean so much to him. The two who knew of the Darkest parts of himself, and still believed he could have Light in his Heart. The two that, like Sora, still believed he had value no matter what.

Riku was going to announce that he would stay and fight alongside them, that they were going to find a way out of the Realm of Darkness together, until Aqua interjected with a "Nope."

He gave her a flat look. "You didn't even hear what I was going to say."

"I didn't need to," She walked through the Dark smoke of the heartless fading away and dismissed her keyblade as Mickey came closer as well. "You indicated enough earlier that you were going to try to stay and fight. You were probably going to say that now, weren't you?"

He had been caught. She chuckled.

"I'm glad you're eager to be on the side of Light again," Aqua said. "That's good. And believe me, we'll need that soon. But you can't stay here in the Realm of Darkness, Riku. It's far too dangerous for you given what you've experienced so far with Maleficent and Ansem, and your own turmoil as well."

"But what about you?" He tentatively gestured to her appearance, stained with Darkness. Riku was uncertain as to if pointing out the fact would be rude, but it was also a fact that she could be in just as much danger as he was if she stayed.

"I'll stay with her," Mickey assured him, but Aqua shook her head.

"The battle for the Realm of Light is not won," She declared. "And I have a feeling that one keyblade will not be enough for whatever will come next. Sora and her friends will need your help, Mickey. They'll need your guidance as much as Riku does."

"No way," Riku straightened, "This is crazy, you—you can't just keep staying in this place. It's hell!"

Maybe he felt a little weird about losing his composure right then, but it was as much the truth as Aqua's condition. The Realm of Darkness had a way of breaking you open and exposing all of the rawest parts of yourself, and Riku had fallen apart after what must have been only a few hours or a day here at the very most according to his perception. But his perception didn't mean anything in this Dark Realm located beyond all ideas of right and wrong, that messed with your head as much as your Heart. For all he knew they could have been in here for a month by now, as Aqua had already spent an entire decadehere without realizing.

And she was visibly scarred from the experience. Her hair whitened at the tips, her eyes with a thin ring of gold around the pupil that cut through the dark blue of her iris like lightning. Her arms and legs going Dark purple, and fingertips just barely a foreboding tinge of red.

And Aqua wanted to remain here?

"I will be fine. And if something does happen," She gave him a wry smile. "I can come back from it. I know I can; You taught me that, Riku."

"I did?"

"Yep," Aqua replied. "Thanks to you, and Mickey's help, I know this is not the end. And thanks to the two of you and Terra, I know what's at stake."

Mickey made a worried sound as his ears bowed forward slightly. "I know you'd be strong enough to survive," he began, "But Aqua—"

"Don't worry about me," She assured him. "I am not afraid. I will face the long Darkness. The next time someone finds themselves in this Realm, like Riku, I will be here. I will be their wayfinder," Aqua pulled out the star-shaped charm from her pocket one last time. "A Light to cut through all the shadows. A Light to help guide them back home. And one day, I'll return to Terra, and Ven, and to all of you."

"Can you promise us that you'll come back?" Riku asked. "And that you'll be okay?"

Her smile spread into a small grin as she ruffled his hair. "Yes," Aqua held her pinky out, and he linked it with his own. On her other side Mickey held his pinky out and she took it with her other one as the string holding the wayfinder charm circled her wrist. Mickey's oversized hands made it so that linking with Aqua's was a little awkward, but not impossible. "No matter what happens, no matter when, I'll be okay. I'll come back one day. I'm Master Aqua, and that's a promise."

"Good," Riku matched her expression as they all let go. He looked around the empty clearing of bedrock. "So, um, how are we going to get out of here? Mickey, you said there's always a door to the Light, but where?"

"Well," Mickey scratched his head. "Hmm."

"It's a long shot," Aqua answered as she put away the wayfinder charm, "A _very_ long shot. But I think I have an idea of how to get you guys to somewhere safe."

"You do?"

She nodded. "Before you got here, Riku, Mickey said the words, 'May your Heart be your guiding Key.' I hadn't heard anyone say that phrase in ages, even before making my way down here. I hadn't thought much about what it could mean until he told Sora that there was always a door to the Light."

"What are ya thinking, Aqua?" Mickey enquired.

"I'm thinking it could be taken both figuratively and literally," Aqua held out her hands to them both and kneeled down just slightly, for Mickey to reach as easily as Riku. "Doesn't any door, even a door to the Light, need a key to open it? And if our Hearts are our guiding keys, then a door to the Light will need our Hearts' Light for it to open and have us find our way."

Riku couldn't deny that logic, and from the looks of it neither could Mickey.

"Now," Aqua took a deep breath as their interlocked hands began to glow. She closed her eyes. "Call forth your Light in your Heart as best you can and repeat after me: 'May my Heart be my guiding Key.'"

* * *

 **SORA**

 _Day Sixteen_

With the gummi ship gone, and the group having no other ideas nor options, they walked.

And they walked, and they walked, and they walked.

None of them were sure what day it was, or where they were. The only landmarks around the group within sight were the oceans of grass and sky, with the occasional tree steadfastly marking the landscape like an errant brushstroke along the curve of the path. If this was still the Realm of Darkness somehow, Sora thought from time to time, it was quite peaceful. And if they were in the Realm of Light, then it was exactly as expected.

The grass rippled in great waves beneath the sighs of the wind. The air itself smelled so much cleaner here than anywhere else the group had traveled, not even in the wilds of Deep Jungle, as though this land had been untouched for all of its existence until she and her friends had found themselves here and would remain untouched until the end of time after they would make their leave. And everything around them seemed to be blurred just slightly with a pleasantly dreamlike film.

Sora hadn't had much opportunity in her journey so far to actually savor the beauty of the worlds they'd come across. She and her friends had always been running to or from something, fighting heartless and whatever foes they faced. And in the short respites in between Sora would always find a way to goof around to keep the mood light. To have a break.

And now? Well…now they'd finally gotten their break. Sort of. Sure, Sora wasn't back home on Destiny Islands like she'd planned, but that was okay. At least home actually existed again. Her home, and that of countless others amongst the worlds who'd found themselves just as lost as her in the upheaval. Ansem and Maleficent couldn't hurt anyone anymore, Kairi had her body back, and Riku had his back along with his Heart. King Mickey would find his way through the Realm of Darkness back to Goofy and Donald's side again. Aqua would be okay. They would all be okay. And Sora trusted in that.

Of course, there would probably be someone else coming along soon enough to try and risk all of that again and throw everything back into Darkness. Kairi was right: There would always be someone looking for power for all the wrong reasons, using all the wrong methods. But Sora and her friends had won once before, and she knew they could do it again. For her friends were her power just as she was theirs in turn.

But right now, though, there was nothing to fear. And nobody to fight.

All was well.

Jiminy made notes in his journal and interjected here and there as Sora, Donald, and Goofy each traded stories of their own escapades before their journeys had joined into one. Tales of Donald and Goofy's adventures and misadventures with the king before he'd ascended the throne were responded to with her own antics alongside Kairi and Riku back on Destiny Islands. Laughter was shared as the hours hurried by.

And as they made their way down the path, it was plain to see the changes in the daylight as the day went on. They chased the last sliver of sun on the horizon as the sky transformed from perfect blue to a sleepy hue of red with nightfall, as the first stars of the night began to unveil themselves to light their way.

And stars there were aplenty, far more than before; Every light they watched dim through their travels to the final fight against Ansem had come alive once more, and their companions seemed to come out of hiding as well. Stars that marked the worlds they'd had a direct hand in saving, and stars that marked the worlds they'd had an indirect hand in saving by quelling the growing Darkness that threatened them all. Stars that held friends they'd met along their journey so far, and stars that held friends they had yet to meet. Stars that cheered them on.

More and more stars came out of hiding that night for the group as they finally made camp in the meadow off of the path, and they were treated that evening to a spectacular sky that Sora had never known could exist. She'd never seen so many stars even in the darkest nights of Destiny Islands, in those quiet hours before the dawn when the whole world was asleep, and the streetlights began to dim in wait for morning.

The group passed the time until they fell asleep by guessing which stars theirs and their friends' worlds were, whether one's ochre glow marked Agrabah or Olympus. Whether the azure sparkle two stars to the right was London or Neverland. But as Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy guessed on, Sora's eye remained fixed on one pleasant twinkle amidst dozens, tinted yellow.

The star of Destiny Islands, that had once withered and faded far over her head as she woke up on that first night to find herself alone in Traverse Town.

A small yellow star she had called home.

* * *

 **?**

 _Day Fifteen_

The room was pale, cold, devoid of all color and all life save for the two that sat within it.

Though one of those individuals would argue that they didn't qualify as any form of life at all. And the other would be spoken of the same, given that It didn't have much capacity to argue otherwise.

For such was the plight of echoes. To only ever be able to tell their tales by the words of others. To only ever know themselves by the words of others.

"Alright, one more time," Vexen tapped his pen against his papers and sighed. His eyes skimmed the uncountable rows and rows of numbers and diagrams scrawled along their margins. "Consonant practice, from the beginning of the list. Go."

It watched the pen go up and down onto the page. How the pen went _tap tap tap_ on the surface of the paper. It blinked past the black hair beginning to fall into Its vision and absently mimicked the pen's movements, making Its index finger tap against the armrest of Its chair in the same staccato.

'P's were first. Those were the easiest, and It had learned those almost before the 'M's. Without even Vexen needing to show It how.

"Puh," It murmured. The sound came out with some force. "Pet. Pair. Pay-perr—Paper."

"Good. Go on."

Vexen checked something off on the paper, and It mimicked that action too. A small diagonal movement of Its finger downward before a slightly larger upward swipe. Like an unbalanced 'V'.

After 'P's were 'M's, followed by 'B's, and then 'W's, and then several others. It did its best to keep Its eyes on Vexen and the paper and to distract Itself with his mannerisms and responses, approvals and disapprovals, and to recite the words he wanted It to enunciate in the way that he wanted. But in the corners of the room were piles of bone-white bodies, failed and featureless. They were stacked against each other like chairs.

It was unsettled by the sight of them, but It couldn't figure out why. Something about knowing Itself was the first 'true success' Vexen had, that It would have been so close to being another placed in the stack, left a cold pulling feeling that traveled up Its back. Like Vexen's ice settling in Its pink fingertips.

"Zuh," 'Z's were the hardest. It pressed its tongue just barely against Its closed teeth and slightly drew back Its lips to make the right sound. "Zoo. Zigzag. Zip."

"Excellently done," Vexen checked off the last box in the chart and leaned back in his chair, before beginning to tap his pen against the corner of his mouth as he inspected It. It calculated the upward tilt to his chin and his relaxed brow as a measure of approval. It minutely relaxed its brow as well. "And that sound is in another word: Zero."

"Zero."

He gave a nod. "I've taught you basic arithmetic before. Have I ever shown you how I came up with your name?"

It shook its head. Black hair fell into Its eyes more, and It tucked the strands behind Its ears underneath the hood.

"Number i. Also annotated as No.i," Vexen scribbled down Its name in one of the few corners of the paper that still had free space, his handwriting forming long, slanted loops that were nearly unreadable. "What we would call an imaginary number, though I'd argue that's a misnomer. It's typically used as a, hmm, let's say it's like a placeholder—If only in the same sense that the number negative one is a placeholder and technically imaginary as well, figuratively speaking. You can't point to negative one blocks of ice, for instance, the same way that you can point to one block of ice, correct? Because it would not physically exist. In mathematics, number i is used the same way to refer to the square root of negative one. We don't _know_ what the number is, precisely. And ordinarily, the square roots of negative numbers simply wouldn't exist. But in the same way that we use negative numbers like negative one to do such things as accounting, we use number i to find solutions to equations where otherwise none would be found."

He was looking at It again, with approval once more. "Such is the beauty of math. When we work through the rules of what should happen, and find ourselves at points where our then-current suites of tools fail…then we can work around those rules to find something that may yet work for achieving what we want."

The piles and piles of failed experiments in the corner loomed in Its sight over Vexen's shoulders.

He saw where It was looking and decided to glance over his shoulder as well. But compared to Its unease, he appeared much more calm. And why wouldn't he? Vexen had created every one of those bodies, after all. He told It so.

Could It be reduced back into one of those as well, if It didn't follow his orders?

Vexen had never made the threat aloud, but then he had never needed to. It wasn't willing to take the risk.

"Mathematicians like my old master, King Ansem, initially thought imaginary numbers to be useless. But when using something like the quadratic formula for instance, or develop technologies, they found they missed obvious solutions. Because they were ignoring the solutions and properties of imaginary numbers. Including those numbers allowed men like him and I to get the real solutions we were looking for. Solutions like you."

Vexen looked back towards It and smiled.

"Sometimes, in order to solve a problem, you just have to introduce a little bit of magic."

There was a knock at the door, and Vexen's mouth pressed into a thin line. They both turned to see a man with long blue hair begin to walk into the room.

"You again?" Vexen spat as the man looked on disinterestedly. "Tell the superior I'm not finished. There's still a veritable battery of tests left to do."

"You've stalled for long enough," He replied, and gestured for It to stand up. It complied.

Vexen balked. "Stalled? Replicas are delicate work, and that one's the first to not fall apart after two steps, never mind almost two weeks. We need more time to be sure."

"Your initial results with this one was more than satisfactory for what we needed. And didn't you have another that did almost acceptably, but required more data? We gave you what you asked for. The superior got it himself. Are you so bold as to demand more when you've already gotten what you wanted?"

Vexen did not have a response to that, and looked somewhere past them both with the same expression that he had when he was trying to calculate his next move. The man continued on his way towards the door.

As It walked through the threshold, Vexen called out from within, "Well it's not as if he'll give _you_ what you want! Don't get angry when you inevitably find out that you'll get nothing from pretending to be his—"

The man stilled as Vexen called him a word It had never heard before. After several seconds, It cautiously peeked up through Its bangs to see his blue-green eyes widened, his smooth skin wrinkled with an expression It had never seen before but recognized instantly. Fury. Until it smoothed back out again with a forced exhale.

"I am okay with nothing," The man replied stiffly. "In nothingness lies power. You'd do well to remember that, number four. Know your place."

"Are you _sincerely_ attempting to pull rank, number seven?!"

Before Vexen could say anything more than that, the man slammed the door shut behind them. The pale halls were enough to dim Vexen's yelling into a far-off muffled noise, but It couldn't hear anything in particular. If It were bolder, It would have attempted to open the door again to hear; It had never been exposed to the inner workings of the Organization Thirteen like this before. It had never known anything more to even this place, this 'Castle Oblivion', beyond the office they left behind and the bright expanse of the hallway the two were quickly making their way through.

And then, as if he could read Its mind, the man told It, "Look your fill. You'll never see these halls again."

It was thankful for that fact, if only so that It would never have to look at those piles of bodies again. Failed siblings stacked up in uncaring heaps.

* * *

 **ROXAS**

 _Day Fifteen_

He was startled awake that morning by a knock on his door, the first in his memory. It was Axel.

"Good mo-o-o-orning! You ready for another day of babysit—" Axel had swooped into the room in an exaggerated gesture, his arms raised high above his head before finally opening his eyes to look at Roxas and stopping short. "—ting? Uh."

Was there something wrong? He looked down at himself. Nothing seemed out of place. His uniform was on, the sheets this morning were just as straight as Saix instructed him to keep them (another first for Roxas, as he'd found he had a habit of tossing and turning in his sleep and often messing up his bed). The room was exactly as it was when Roxas had been assigned it.

"What?"

"Did you really sleep like that?"

"Like what?"

"You know," Axel gestured meaninglessly towards him and the bed. "With your shoes on? And your coat?"

"…Yes?"

"On _top_ of the sheets?"

"I did."

"That's weird."

"It is?"

"I mean, kind of, yeah," Axel scratched at his head. "How long have you been doing that?"

Roxas glanced down at the starched sheets blankly. "I don't know. Since I got this room, I guess."

"I thought you were done with the zombie stage of being a nobody," He joked. "Don't tell me there's a robot stage, too? I must have missed the memo."

"What's a robot?"

"It's kind of like a zombie but made of metal and computer stuff. Don't worry about it," Axel gestured for him to follow, and Roxas did. They made their way through the residence hall as he went on, "The point is, don't do that. Or do, if you want to, I guess. I'm not your keeper. Well, okay, I kind of am technically your babysitter right now so maybe I am your keeper. Agh!" He shook his head and his bright red hair went flying. "Whatever. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that we gotta head down to the meeting room."

Roxas rubbed the last dregs of sleep out of his eyes. "Is that why we're getting started so early today?"

"Yep. The boss-man's excited about something. I've never seen him this lively outside of finding you," Axel's absurd height gave him a bigger stride, and it wasn't long before Roxas had to nearly jog to keep pace. Axel threw him a grin over his shoulder. "Now keep up, buttercup. Maybe if we get there early, me and Demyx can talk Lexaeus into making pancakes afterward and Saix won't complain."

Roxas had never sat in his chair in the meeting room since first being shown the ropes, after he'd more or less woken up from the initial stupor of becoming a nobody, and he'd certainly never experienced sitting in his chair in the context of one of the organization's meetings. So at the feeling of his chair beginning to move and promptly spiral up towards the never-ending ceiling, Roxas gave a small yelp and clung onto the armrests.

Larxene barked out a laugh as her chair settled above his. "Don't tell me the new recruit's just as much of a baby as Demyx is?"

"No," Roxas defended. He did his best to look more brave than he felt. The floor seemed to loom from far below, and Roxas pushed himself back into his chair as far as he could go.

"That was one time! Two times, tops," Demyx crossed his arms. His chair was almost as short as Roxas'.

"Twelve times," Zexion corrected disinterestedly. His lexicon disappeared in a flash as he finished double-checking his notes.

"You're seriously keeping track of that? Not cool, man!"

"The last time was eighty-nine days ago, after you succeeded in your mission in The Land of Dragons and your chair rose two feet as a result."

Larxene laughed again. "Is that why you keep failing your missions, Demyx? Keeping your chair low because you can't stand heights?"

"No!"

"Oh, really? Either you're scared of heights or you just suck at being a nobody. Pick one."

"I, uh…well…"

From the other side of the circle, Xigbar leered down at the two with a look of amusement in his remaining eye. His scar puckered around his grin to make it look even wider. "And I distinctly remember one of those times you had something a little extra scared out of you too, didn't you? Hey, Zexion, care to check the meeting minutes for that incident?"

"Wait—No—"

"Fine," Zexion huffed as his lexicon reappeared as quickly as it had vanished. He began to flip through the pages as Demyx started to panic.

"Oh come on, guys, seriously?"

But whatever confirmation or denial Zexion would give them was cut short by the sound of the doors flying open. Slow, measured footsteps echoing through the meeting room marked the superior's and Saix's arrival.

Their arrival, and one more.

All of the assembled members leaned forward in their chairs to varying degrees to get a good look at the small figure on the platform, and Roxas did the same as much as he could withstand. But there wasn't much to see. Whoever it was down there had their hood up, obscuring their features. All Roxas could tell for sure was that they were short and slight.

Xigbar guffawed, and Roxas couldn't figure out why.

Until Larxene asked, "So Xemnas, who's the Roxas lookalike?"

Lookalike? He looked back down at the figure, but the hood still obscured their features. No blond hair or anything that could match. Could Larxene somehow see more of them than him, even though her chair was so much higher up?

"Larxene, address the superior properly," Saix ordered. She ignored him.

"Indeed," Marluxia agreed from Larxene's other side, "Something is amiss here, superior. And isn't he supposed to be wearing the organization's uniform?"

Xigbar laughed louder, and everyone ignored him.

Roxas was only more confused. From what he could see, the figure was indeed wearing the regulation uniform, just with some slight differences that were normal amongst the individual members' preferences: Like how Demyx had shoulder pads added to his coat, and Axel had closer-fitting sleeves, the figure seemed to opt for a bell-shaped hem to their coat and sleeves. Not identical, but no more different than would be expected. What were Marluxia and Larxene talking about?

"Don't question the superior, number eleven," Saix reminded him.

"Not to worry, friends. Vexen has brought us good tidings," Xemnas' voice nearly boomed across the chamber from his spot far above them all. Vexen gave a bitter scoff. "Today is a momentous day. I am pleased to announce that a new comrade has been chosen to wear the coat."

"Sure doesn't look like a coat to me," Larxene muttered under her breath as she inspected her nails.

"Number fourteen," Xemnas announced as the figure turned their head towards Roxas and smiled. "Xion."

 **END OF ACT ONE**

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTES**

Just the few notes I have for this chapter before I commence onto the crying over finishing this. Y'all can skip my crying after these if you want, I won't judge.

1\. So I know you're all probably mad about me deliberately leaving out the scene at the end of KH1 where the trinity trio chases after Pluto because he had a letter from King Mickey in his mouth…but apparently that's not canon. No, seriously! At the very start of the CoM novel they honest to god just hand-wave it away and say "Oh that was just a dream Sora had while they were en route to Castle Oblivion". No joke, they literally pulled the 'it was just a dream' crap ಠ_ಠ

Anyway, I would have tried to fit it in regardless but I couldn't come up with any reason for how Mickey would be able to gain access to Pluto for where he's at in the story (or why Pluto would be anywhere near the RoD or the RiB) or what Mickey could possibly say in that letter that would be so important at this point that he would choose such an unreliable messenger (dogs eat homework, right? Why wouldn't they eat letters from kings, too?).

2\. For that one scene-in the actual 358/2 days game, Roxas continually sleeps on top of his bed with his shoes on and everything. (and I think Xion did too but I'm not sure, I do remember her doing the same thing when she was in that coma) Aaanyways, it's super weird and kind of funny to see him continuously doing it all the way to days 200, 300, etc. Nobody ever seems to call him on it. I know logically it's probably because the developers didn't want to waste the polygons animating the bedsheets to cover him, and to use up memory on another roxas model where he's not wearing the overcoat/shoes/etc when they had so much else to do. But I thought it would be funny to leave it in here to help show how much of a little alien roxas can be. I love that kid.

The interesting part is that after he lost his memories in the start of KH2 and was in the digital TT, he slept in regular pajamas and with no socks or shoes (and I think that may actually be the only time in the entire series we see anyone's bare feet—Roxas' feet, and by extension Sora's too being his nobody, really are big enough to warrant those ridiculously overlarge shoes! I guess KH characters are basically really pretty hobbits?)

3\. I apologize to any math people in the audience if I got the rudimentary explanation of imaginary numbers totally wrong (and I likely did, I'm shit at math). Please correct me! I need to be accurate for when it comes up again and again as a rhetorical device!

4\. As you may remember from Days, Xion looks different to different people at different times! It is very annoying to keep track of. I will probably mess that up a lot in the next fic! But I can't remember if everyone saw her in the Org13 getup regardless of visage, but it's particularly important that some characters *cough* see very specific people at very specific points in time *cough cough* regardless of if they consciously remember them or not *COUGH COUGH COUGH* and that y'all readers are aware of that. You can probably put two and two together as to what certain members see in that scene from what you know of KHUX and Days!

5\. To those of you who have (super helpfully) pointed out cultural errors or even just normal errors, a sincere thanks to you for helping correct me! In the post-completion revisions I will definitely take them into account. Please don't hesitate to point out any other errors I may have made, everyone! I need to know to improve! Don't be afraid!

* * *

 **Your Adventure Begins in the Dead of Night** (AKA, YABAM Part 2: Electric Boogaloo)(jk) **will begin on November 30th, 2019!**

 **(And if you ever happen to come back and reread this fic, and find paragraphs or even entire paragraphs spontaneously appeared or disappeared...or maybe even an entire chapter added in...that's me. It's just post-completion revision going on between me and the beta. The extra chapter being added would be me breaking Hollow Bastion pt.2 in half because 60k is just too much, I'll admit) (also there will be side content like minifics and illustrations in the interim until I begin _Your Adventure Begins in the Dead of Night_! You're much more likely to see them over on Ao3 than FFN, I will confess! It's just that Ao3 has so much easier ways of uploading and editing works! I'm sorry! I'll try posting them here when I remember!)**

 **(Also, as always, announcements related to this series (like the aforementioned side content) and in-progress and completed illustrations for this fic and any side-content to go with it will be first seen on my tumblr! I preemptively apologize for any rambling and off-subject posts I make in between the good stuff, I'm too lazy to keep things separated lmao)**

* * *

 **I'M FUCKING SOBBING YOU GUYS** 𝑯𝒐𝒍𝒚 𝒇𝒖𝒄𝒌

Okay, to be serious (because these are very srs feelings I'm sharing here), YABAM started way before I opened a single blank word doc. It started even before I wrote out that enormous rant on tumblr where I finally abandoned all sense of shame and actually started writing the snippets that would go on to become the prologue and first chapter. It started...*drum roll*...when I was 7 years old and watching my older sisters play KH1.

Think back to its prerendered opening. 7 year old me thought both Sora and Riku were girls.

I mean, let's be honest-they still look like girls in most of the prerendered scenes! Riku had guns out the wazoo (seriously, who gave a 15 year old boy steroids? wild) even then but with the hair and his ridiculous prettiness I thought he was just an exceptionally buff girl. I didn't realize the voice in the intro was Sora's. I had no idea what was happening but I loved it. A girl leading a video game? Almost unheard of then (kids weren't exactly allowed to play bayonetta, and we hadn't discovered the metroid series until years later). Add in the disney and FF and that shit was like crack to little me. I didn't find out until later on (we kept the volume down cuz we played laaaate on school nights) that they were guys, and I felt a little let down, but it was enough to plant the idea.

You know those daydreams that play out in your head when you're trying to fall asleep? How over time the storyline builds and builds, and after a certain point the fantasy that you used to try and fall asleep with is now the fantasy that keeps you awake because you keep coming up with good stuff? That became this. That was YABAM.

And way back, it became the basis of a lame fanfic (based on the outline I wrote for what's now planned as my epilogue story when I finish this series) I made in 7th grade that was only 3 tiny chapters before my preteen ADHD ass dropped it like it was hot. Don't go looking for it! I deleted it before FFN started the purges. I don't even have the computer I wrote it on anymore. It's straight up gone except for that outline (which I still have! Somehow my 7th grade ass pulled off a plot that still holds up!)

But even though my first try was terrible and promptly abandoned, I never stopped thinking about this story. It was my dirty secret of sorts, though it didn't warrant that designation at all (let's just say that in my search for fem!Sora works of any kind, drawings/fanfics...7 year old me stared into the void. And the void stared right back. And I continued to stare into the void for another 16 years until writing this fic because I'm dumb.) Why did I consider it shameful, even though I saw far worse shit in the dark corners of the web I searched?

The answer's quite simple, and yet not simple: Misogyny. (whatever you may think about that answer, it's true)

Girl characters didn't really lead stories back then, and they didn't really lead stories until the past 5-7 years outside of genre flicks (in general terms at least-Alien's a good movie and you should watch it). Hell, they still don't make up at least half of the cast of most stories. (the first time I ever saw that was fucking homestuck!) So think about when I was a little kid and seeing KH for the first time: People rolled their eyes at capable girl characters, calling them 'token action girls'. They eye-rolled at the stereotypical damsels in distress (for admittedly warranted reasons, but when you don't accept a girl character being capable, what other option do you have? damsels.) They eye-rolled at girl characters being anything other than the love interest (and that was usually the extent of their character development). They eye-rolled at girl characters that had any sort of special qualities or abilities, calling them mary sues even when they wouldn't fit the guidelines of a mary sue at all. Meanwhile, actual mary sues such as James Bond and Harry Potter became cultural icons (and Harry Potter is an amazing series, but you gotta admit Harry's a bit of a mary sue at times).

And at the same time, the KH fandom had a serious misogyny problem (it still kinda does tbh). Kairi? If she showed up in fanfics at all she was killed off or twisted into a distorted version of herself that was in the way of Riku's and Sora's ~true love~ and had to be stopped at any cost. When Xion appeared, they did the same with her so Roxas and Axel could ride off into the sunset giving each other reacharounds. For a long, long time, the KH fandom just straight up hated its female characters, and every other fandom hated their female characters too.

So in a time like that, wanting something as simple as genderswap felt unthinkable. So I just kept YABAM a fantasy.

I don't know what particular event goaded me into deciding to start writing YABAM last year. Honestly it was just a normal day that turned not-normal with me letting go. I wrote 40k words in two days just writing this AU, and I've never done that before or since.

I was ready to keep working on this with the KH fandom hating me or ignoring me. I still am and always will be ready. No force on earth can keep me from writing this series anymore. Trolls can keep coming, doxxers can find me, and I can't give shit or even a wet fart if I tried. So to see any audience at all for this story, never mind the incredible response you guys have given me so far? Nothing in the world is enough to express how much I am thankful for you. Your response, from the novel-length comments (which I reread!) to the anonymous clicks I see in the traffic stats (Canada, I see you and I love you)? From the rec bookmark to the in-browser bookmarks I will never know of? You guys have helped validate a part of myself I should have never been ashamed of. You guys have helped me really cement the knowledge that I was never a freak for wanting this story.

But every last one of you that is even skimming this story have become the stars in my night sky cheering me on. Is that sentimental and cheesy as hell? You god damn bet it is.

But...I'm not particularly concerned about looking like a weirdo anymore for saying what I want to say ٩(๑❛ᴗ❛๑)۶


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